sarah sarah goo, i love you

i have really been blessed with some great girlfriends in my time. let's think back. sarah straw in fourth grade, kim peterson and kirsten leeser in eighth grade, sarah goo from high school to the present, helen and denyelle from high school to the present, jeanna wilson from my first year of college to the present, lisa booth from my junior year of college to the present, angela tristan, kelly jenowiak, and nicole workman this past year. i hope i'm not forgetting anyone. i think those are the major ones.

sarah goo and i go way back. she's one of my long-time friends. we were on the worship team at trinity together in high school. we used to meet up once a week (seemed to be more frequent as time went on :) at crane coffee on 76th and cass to talk about the Lord and life and such. then sarah left and went to montana to do a YWAM dts. we both used to save up calling card minutes (if i remember correctly) to talk to each other... she used to write me letters and send me postcards. i don't know if i returned them... if i did, it wasn't nearly as often as she sent them... because i pretty much suck at doing stuff like that. still do.

my senior year of high school, i took a photography class, and sarah helped me with some of the assignments, because she is an accomplished photographer and has a really nice camera. :) well, one of my initial assignments was to get some action shots of... anything moving, basically. sarah had some really great plastic cups at her house that were transparent and had air bubbles captured in the plastic. i had a great idea and thought, hey, what if we drop this cup on the sidewalk? i can take a picture of it as it bounces up off the ground! it will be a great (and pretty) action shot! the cup won't break! it's plastic! i know what you're thinking... absolutely GENIUS. i think sarah and i actually had a conversation in which i was trying to convince her that the cup would not break, because plastic is INDESTRUCTIBLE. well, per the "action" plan, sarah drops the cup (i think we filled it with water?) as i am laying on the grass, trying to get a ground zero shot, and... well... the cup didn't exactly bounce like i thought it would. well, i mean, if you call shattering into fifty pieces bouncing, then i guess it did. but that's what happened. the cup flat-out BROKE. i sort of got pictures of it breaking. i think sarah and i laughed about that for a good two hours after it happened, mostly at my stupidity than anything else. but THEN, sarah somehow saved the cup, superglued it back together, and gave it to me as a christmas present that year. THAT'S how great she is. i want to tell you, dear friends, that it remains in my car today, holding my spare pennies.

the summer before i went to college, she was back in omaha, getting ready to return to montana to be on staff at ywam. i got to meet two friends she made while she was there: mikey olson and matt manzo. that summer we all saw each other a few times, i think. we became fast friends. we spent almost a week sleeping on the floor at mike's house, playing music and cards and such. i played my first real gig with them in a coffee house in eau claire, wisconsin. mike played with me and made me look a lot better than i really was. i remember we played weezer's "say it ain't so" and the crowd went wild. at least that's how i remember it. it was a blast. later in the summer matty came to omaha and we shared more music and talked until all hours of the night. he taught me how to play dave matthew's "christmas song," which i never forgot and still continue to play to this day.

my freshman year of college i was went to montana over spring break to visit sarah. it was great and yet... a little strained. i'm still not exactly sure why, though i'm convinced it was entirely my fault. and i'm sorry for that. i'm not sure that we ever really talked about it extensively after the fact... i'm not sure what to say, because i never really figured it out. but, that season of weirdness is over (and has been for some time), and i am so thankful that the Lord has restored our friendship.

my sophomore year of college i was looking for a birthday present for sarah. i went to.... where else? the church rummage sale. only there would i find something truly unique. which i did. i found the most fabulous birthday present EVER. a framed oil painting of frank sinatra. i remember my heart about burst out of my chest when i saw it and after i bought it. i remember taking it to starbucks to show all of my coworkers. john, the attractive 30-something man who comes in five times a day to get illegal refills, saw it and offered me a hundred dollars for it. i said no way, i couldn't find a better birthday present for sarah. so i took it to the post office and got yelled at for not having it properly packaged to send. it was a really embarrassing post office stint that i would like to forget. i mean, come on, there is NO class in high school that teaches you how to package something well. where do people learn this stuff?

so now sarah and i only see each other a few times a year, but it is glorious when we do. and i feel like maybe He has brought me to a place where i can return a little more of the spiritual blessing that she has been to me all of these years than i could when i was younger. now she's married to a fabulous man and is pressing on to do that which the Lord has called her to.

so this is for sarah goo. beautiful and radiant sarah goo. i pray that the Lord lavishes His provision and grace on you as you and Matt step out into unknown territory.

i can't wait to see you!