Lean On Me

I moved to Alabama when I was 6. I'm pretty sure I loved it from the moment we got there. We lived in a yellow house with a huge front yard and a big stretch of woods in the back. That house will always be my picture of home. My older sister and I built this little village in the woods and called it "Morrisburg" and we spent hours and hours digging in the dirt and growing grass and building little huts. I don't remember how many churches we tried when we got to Alabama. The only church I will ever remember is Shades Mountain Bible church. They had the coolest playground I'd ever seen as a 6 year old from a podunk air force base in the middle of Oklahoma. That playground is where I  met a pair of lifelong friends. Luke and Melinda. I met Melinda first and I feel like inseparable is the only way to describe it. We did *everything* together. I remember one day after church there was a church lunch and Melinda was sitting with me and my family and her brother came up to me and told me I was pretty. I look back on it now and giggle because we were in 2nd grade, but that was that. He was the first boy that ever told me I was pretty and in my little 8 year old mind i guess that made me decide he was ok with me. The little glass frog he gave me for valentines day that year still sits on my desk today in college. We moved away the summer before I turned 12. Even though I was so young, to this day I will still say I have never been more heartbroken. I knew I left my heart behind when we moved away. Sooner than later I fell mostly out of contact with my old friends. Then, the summer before 10th grade we went back for a reunion of the church I had grown up in that had since fell apart. I picked right back up with Melinda but didn't see Luke until the second day we were there. It was weird. Seeing him again. I guess it's a whole lot different when you're almost 16 and think "wow he's cute" then when you're 6 and don't even know what that means. However, I didn't think anything of it. At that point I had a facebook and kept in close contact with Melinda after that. I didn't talk to Luke again until my senior year in high school. We had both just gone through break-ups and I guess that brought us closer. Mid-march he asked me to go to Prom with him in Alabama. I was *way* more thrilled than I was willing to admit. Long story short, that weekend of Prom in Alabama was without a doubt the best weekend of my life. Silly and cliche right? The quarterback of the football team/ prom king could go to prom with *anyone* he wanted  and somehow he chooses the dorky girl he's known since 2nd grade. Lame. I would have never admit to myself at the time that I felt anything other than my heart was at home in the state I knew and loved. Fall of my freshman year in college I started dating an ex-marine and subsequently (and regretfully) fell in love. Luke came down to visit me that fall and things were awkward between us. Why? It would take me another year, a semester and a half of college, and a break-up with the first guy I ever truly fell in love with to realize that my heart was at home in Alabama for more reasons than one. My heart was at home because I had spent years forming a close relationship with the most wonderful family I've ever known besides my own. My heart was at home because I knew that Melinda would stand by me as a best friend my whole life. My heart was at home because I finally realized that the boy that told me I was pretty in 2nd grade was the boy that would always always always be there for me. I was unfair to him over and over without even realizing it, but the minute someone broke my heart, Luke was there. I will never forget sitting on the beach with him, crying, and he said "lean on my shoulder" and for once in my life I didn't fight him. That kind of love, is a love that comes only from Christ. The kind of love I had been dying to feel. The only verse that describes this is John 15:13 " Greater love has no one than this, that he would lay down his life for his friends". That is what Luke did for me. Dropped everything and came to pick up the pieces of my mess when my heart was broken. That is what Christ does for me every day, he overlooks my brokenness and says "Lean on my shoulder". I will continue to rejoice and thank him every day for sending me a home away from home with a person who will *always* have my heart.