Made in Richmond

We went to MattWhite’s house last night (formerly known as James and Jennifer’s house) to continue our celebration of Mariah’s birthday party. Their backyard has been the host of several festivities, mostly because they have a fire pit. Yeah, that’s right.

Anyway, as most of the gatherings are boy-dominant, crazy antics usually happen. Last night involved Jake trying to hurdle over the trashcan in the alley. Of course there was lots of peer pressure, yelling of inappropriate things, and falling on the ground. Fun times, but not as funny as last New Year’s.

See, there’s a giant tree back there. And there was a rope in the tree. And an empty trashcan nearby. And Jake had had some beers. The video is dark, but the talking is the best part. The maniacal giggling in the background is my darling husband.

Enjoy:

James and Jennifer just left. They came over to give us the key to their P.O. Box and say thier goodbyes before they leave for Scotland tomorrow at around 5pm.

Honestly, my heart is a little bit broken. But more than anything I’m so, so proud of them.

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Philippians 1, 3-6

James and Jennifer will be coming by after work to say goodbye before they leave for Scotland on Wednesday. Sunday was supposed to be the official goodbye, but Jennifer came up to me at church and told me that she would come by on Tuesday instead. I’m so glad she did.

I don’t do well with situations that come with a lot of anticipation, particularly anticipation that has built up over months or even years.

For example, a lot of my bridal party thought I was going to actually throw up and die on the day of my wedding because I was so completely unglued. I wasn’t nervous or anything - it was just that we were engaged for 18 months. Weddings are emotional enough without feelings that have been percolating for a year and half. So I spent the two hours before the wedding blubbering and hyperventilating, but come game-time I was perfectly fine.

My last day of school this year was similar. I had known for four months that I was going to leave. That was four months of knowing I was going to have to say goodbye and start a new career. So, I spent the last two days of school with my chin constantly trembling and a substantial lump in my throat.

I knew I would react this way on Sunday at James and Jennifer’s last service at FSC.  I knew from the moment they said they were going to Scotland that I would be a mess when they left. I had no idea what it would be like saying goodbye to them, but I knew I would be a basket case. And yes indeed I was. Luckily, I had been given an adorable baby to hold for the first half of the service, so I was able to just stare at her whenever I felt the emotions welling up. But then, naturally, her mother wanted her back, so I was left to blubber on my own for the last half hour, particularly when they got up to address the congregation. James’s words were warm and kind, Jennifer’s were transparent and loving - the perfect representation of what these two people are.

Yes, the one who gave the audible sob was me.

So, Jennifer and I agreed that our time together tomorrow will be short. A hug, see you later, and off they go.

And then I will quickly make myself a drink and start planning our trip to Dornoch. Who wants to take care of the dogs while we’re gone?

…for my dear friend Andi-Pants. I feel that she is one of the few who would really appreciate it.

(Image courtesy of Busted Tees. Go there and buy stuff. For me specifically.)

Go here to see why (he is the giant-sized friend). From what Ross told me, it took James all of 2 seconds to realize what was going on and react in a way that ended up protecting his friend from what could have been a very bad situation.

Thanks for being James, James. Are you sure you have to go?

Please take a moment to go here and here. These are blogs that I have unforgivably left of my roll for far too long. They belong to two of the people that I spend much of my day corresponding with via the Internets, and I am forever shameful of the fact that I haven’t listed them until now. You can use the links above, or please refer to the annotated version below. Thank you.

Awkward Things I Say to Girls: I love this blog with my heart, just as I love it’s author. The best part about it is that everything on this blog is true. Painfully and wonderfully true.

Ol’ Stomp and Shout’s Misanthropic Review: Darling Susan loves/knows more about movies than I do. Yes, I know I might as well have told you that chocolate comes from ostrich eggs, but alas, it’s true. I trust very few people’s opinions on movies (because I’m like that), but I always trust hers. And she can quote lines from such classics as Look Who’s Talking and she will put obscure references to The Natural in our works of fiction as a tender, loving message just for me.

It didn’t start out so hot for me. I haven’t been feeling too well the last couple days, so I was unable to get up and help Ross and my in-laws do some much needed work in the backyard. Seriously, it was one of those things that if you even sit up you feel like you’re going to die. I got a lot of sleep last night and I think that helped somewhat. I got up and Ross and I puttered around the house for a while before we had to go and get ready for Cory and Tabatha’s wedding. Cory is the one who performed our marriage ceremony and we love him and Tab so much. They got engaged a while ago and the wedding has been a long time coming - needless to say, we were excited.

Weddings for us are typically like a VT reunion. I didn’t go to Tech but I spent many weekends there to see Ross (and honestly, just as much to see his friends). We don’t all live far away from each other but sometimes life gets in the way and we just don’t get to hang out that much. Weddings are the time that we all get to reconnect and be ridiculous.

The ceremony was beautiful and the reception (at the Jefferson) was so. much. fun. Cory and Tab looked so happy and we all had a great time. There was much dancing, drinking (on Ross’s part - let’s just say he finished the night be yelling lots of ridiculous things to strangers AND hugging pretty much everyone he knew and *didn’t* know at the wedding), and celebration.

We left the wedding at around 11 and went to the Village Cafe to meet up with MattWhite & co. We had good snacks and great conversation. A great ending to a great evening.

I’m going to bed with a sore face and a sore stomach from all of the laughing we did the afternoon and evening. Seriously, a great, great day.

I got this voice mail today:

Hey, Val. It’s Jennifer. I need you to do something for me. You know the other Jennifer at church? Well, she might need a ride to pot luck tonight but she doesn’t have a car. And James saw on my email that she had emailed me so I thought maybe you could email her and tell her to call me if she still needs a ride. Just email her with my number. Here’s her email. Ummmmmmmmmmm, yeah, it’s [insert email here]. That’s [insert email again here - and please include various hilarious letter verifications, like "N as in....ummm...nervous?]. And can you give her my phone number? It’s [insert phone number here]. That’s [insert phone number again here, but very slowly]. Thanks. Bye.

So, I sent the other Jennifer an email like this:

Jennifer,

Jennifer Murphy asked me to email you to let you know that she will be
able to give you a ride to potluck tonight. She would like for you to
call her (xxx.xxx) to set it up, etc. It’s a very long and
complicated story as to why *I* am sending you this email, but hey.

See you tonight I hope!

-Val

But there’s more…

Jennifer just called me to tell me that the email James saw was the other Jennifer saying that she didn’t need a ride to potluck after all. And then she asked me to have a pot of boiling water ready for her when she got to our house.

If anyone else in the entire world had done any of those things I would have gone insane. But, since it was Jennifer Murphy, I found it to be wonderful.

Our lovely and intelligent friend Allison (who actually is a doctor but for some reason she doesn’t want people to call her that - you all know that if *I* were a doctor I would not respond to anything but “Dr. Smarty Pants) left for Belize to provide physical therapy services to people in the local villages.  Be sure to check out her blog and read about another one of my friends out making a difference.

I was at the gym today, doing my required 30 minutes of cardio on the treadmill while watching CNN on the built in TV (seriously, the cardio wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for those blessed screens).  Anyway, they did a brief coverage of the British Open which from what I gathered is being help in Scotland.  Well, that did it for me.  I actually started tearing up and sniffling right there.  And I totally didn’t care.

Allow me to give you some back story.  Our friends James and Jennifer have been planning to go to Scotland as missionaries for a while.  The whole time they’ve been raising support, I completely understood that, yes, someday they would be going and that they would be gone for 2 years.  They are very close to having 100% of their support which means they’ll be heading off probably at the beginning of September.

I knew all of this.  But, for some reason, seeing footage of Tiger Woods struggling against the wind in Scotland made me really get that they are going to be gone and that we are going to spend two years without them.  Yes, they’ll be back for a wedding and hopefully we’ll get to go see them at some point, but we won’t get to see them at least once a week like we do now - like we have for the past 2ish years.  It just made me very sad.

At the same time, I was (and still am) glad to feel that way.   I feel like a lot of people get so caught up in their jobs and the trappings of life that they don’t ever get truly invested in the lives of other people.  We are invested in James and Jennifer and in all of our friends.  We want to see them do well, we pray for them, we love them totally and completely.   They are so wrapped up in who we are that to imagine going through part of our life without any one of them is very difficult to do.

This fall will be the start of a lot of changes for us.  James and Jennifer will be gone.  MattWhite will be gone off and on.  Other things will be different.  But, everything is expected to settled back down in 2009 - for everyone.  I doubt that is a coincidence.  It seems so far away, but when you think about it, in grown-up time, it’s nothing.  I hope I can remind myself of that when I realize that these people aren’t within arms reach for a while.