FROM THE VAULT :: Celebrating my best good friend

This month I’m looking back over the past 10 years of blogging to repost some of the entries that help chronicle a decade of public writing as well as reflect who I was then and who I (still) am now. A lot has changed, yet a great deal has yet to evolve, and so I am reflecting on these things without judgement or regret. Thanks for walking through it with me.

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THANKFUL :: My Best Good Friend, Cerella Sechrist
originally posted on November 25, 2009
 
I often speak of my best good friend (a term I stole from Forrest Gump) and how we’re essentially just new-style pen pals, but many people have difficulty understanding how a friendship can grow so strong when only emails are shared. But it is precisely that love of the written word that brought us together in the first place and has continued to be the foundation upon which our friendship is built. Though Cerella and I have never met in person during our 13-year history, our bond has grown continually stronger in every aspect of relationship. We’ve become sisters after all these years, and it’s precisely because of that faithful email correspondence.

In 1999, when the internet was just making its way into the home of the average person, I took a stab at writing fan fiction for a now-defunct television series called The Magnificent Seven. Cerella read a single story and declared herself my biggest fan. This was my first foray into online communities, my first experience “meeting” people via the internet, and the first time I’d shared any of my writings in public. I wasn’t even using my real name anywhere yet. [Remember how scary it all seemed back then?] But Cerella was honest and encouraging in her love for my writing and the characters I was adding to existing Mag7 canon, and we quickly began corresponding regularly. I learned that she, too, had writing aspirations, so many of our conversations centered around this topic. There were no boundaries in our communication, no generation gaps or personal issues related to our 10-year age difference. We simply shared our hearts and our thoughts and found common interests in books and movies and celebrity crushes. That was the foundation, but it quickly became only a starting point for something far greater.

During the following decade, Cerella and I would reconnect from time to time and catch up on the past weeks or months that had kept us too busy to correspond regularly. Each time it seemed as if no time had passed at all. My experience is that this is a sign of enduring friendship, and the years have proven that to be true. In recent years we’ve kept in constant communication, using email and texts and packages through the postal service, and we’re still each other’s biggest fans despite not yet having met in person, even now. That detail has no effect on our bond. We are sisters in Christ, encouragers of each other’s dreams, and sounding boards for life’s messy details. I have no other friendship that goes so deep or maintains such honesty. I’m sure there would be little personality quirks between us that would certainly put a new dimension on our relationship if we saw each other regularly, but I’m inclined to believe that such things would be of no consequence in the long run. As I’m fond of saying, we know each other’s hearts, and that transcends even the greatest of differences. We both look forward to the day when we can finally sit down and share a meal at the same table and talk long into the night. As all lifelong friends do.

I celebrate Cerella’s friendship every day, but there is one very specific way that is more fun than the rest: the joy of her first published novel, Love Finds You In Hershey, Pennsylvania. Check out this sweet, fun story for yourself and follow Cerella for news of future projects. Join me in celebrating my best good friend!