Meet Kayla...


The story of our friendship is very unique, and honestly makes me think that God has quite a sense of humor. Kayla and I went to the same Christian school growing up. But we were five years apart, so never interacted. At all. I vaguely remember hearing her name once or twice, and her same with me. She remembers my little brother, and I remember her inlaws as her brothers-in-law were closer to my age and that of my brothers. But that's it.

Here's us in 1998 - Kayla in first grade, me in sixth:



So here we were, me upstairs in junior high and highschool, her downstairs in grade school, never even passing in the hallways...never knowing what God had in store for us. And I think that probably on more than one occasion God looked down on us smiling with teary eyes, knowing the struggles that we would have to face on our own, the growing we would have to do...before HE could work in our lives to bring our friendship to pass.

Fast forward about 10 years to Fall of 2009... Kayla was a senior in high school engaged to a national-guard soldier going through basic training. I was married to my soldier-man having just PCSed to Kentucky after our first deployment. And enter Facebook. And we had a mutual friend (we think it was Julie), and I made a comment on her status, and Kayla saw my photo and saw that we went to the same school and that I was married to a soldier. So she sent me a friend request. And, since I am in the habit of accepting friend requests from complete strangers if they happen to look remotely decent and be associated with the military, our cyber-friendship began.

We talked off an on at a very surface Facebook level, commenting on statuses and photos and normal stuff like that. Occasionally, Kayla would instant message me to chat and see how my day was. Sometimes, I was busy, and just kinda found it annoying (lol SORRY KAYLA!), but other times it was nice to have a friend to talk to. This went on for about a year, and then Russ left for Afghanistan again.

And that's when things really started to change. Kayla's daily perky "hey how are you" chats became less of an annoyance and more of a welcome part of my day. In February or March I sent her a big box of all of my "skinny clothes" that I didn't fit into anymore. Which she was ECSTATIC to receive (and it made me so happy that they went to someone who would look amazingly cute in them.)

When April came around and I took my trip up to Ohio to visit my grandparents, we arranged to meet at Starbucks. I wasn't too nervous (as I am also in the habit of meeting random people for coffee if they look to be remotely decent and be associated with the military), but Kayla was nervous.

I was sitting in my car and I saw her walk into Starbucks. Honestly, I did a double take. Cuz she was wearing MY clothes and looked JUST LIKE ME! Well, the skinny pre-baby me that is...


Kayla contacted me sometime in late summer and asked if she could come for a visit. I responded that that would be fun. Then she asked me if she could come for 5 days. Which I was very nervous about. I wasn't sure if I would enjoy sharing my personal space with her for a whole 5 days, but I didn't want to be mean since she was so excited about it, so I said yes. (Turns out she was super nervous about it too, but her husband was encouraging to go have a good time with me and knew she needed a friend, cuz quite frankly, he is awesome like that.) So she booked her flights and started making plans.

Neither of us imagined what an amazing time we would have together. Our relationship was almost symbiotic in its beauty.

You see, as a National Guard spouse, Kayla is in a very unique situation. She deals with the daily stress of being a military wife, having to rearrange her schedule and drop everything to get her husband out the door on a mission, spending days or weeks away from her husband not knowing when he will return. But she has no commissary, no PX, no military wife functions, no PWOC, OFS, or FRG, and no military spouse friends other than her cyber-friends. All these things that I take for granted living near a military installation... Quite frankly, she gets very lonely, and understandably so. So, while she was here I was determined to give her a taste of what it's like to be a part of a strong military community and to be around a bunch of people who truly understand what her life is like.

Our schedule was extremely busy. Tuesday morning we were going to be busy practicing for prayer meeting praise team for PWOC...that is an amazing story! Nothing went as it normally does, because when we walked in to pray with our military sisters, the chapel was filled with soldiers working through a practice for a military memorial service for a fallen soldier that was going to be held later on in the week - a soldier from my husband's battalion. We ended up holding a prayer meeting for and over this memorial and the family of this fallen soldier. There were lots of tears! It was an amazing thing to experience. Practice got moved to a friends house, then we made a quick trip to the library on post for some chick flicks.

Wednesday morning was a playdate with some more military wives, and in the evening we went to the military wife Bible study I attend every week - which is another AMAZING story! This Bible study is an off-shoot of Operation Faithful Support, a non-religious pro-marriage program for spouses of deployed soldiers. (Check out the link, I promise you won't be disappointed!) But, as it's founder, Jill, is a very strong Christian, as are some of the women who attend OFS, she started a Wednesday night Bible study for us. It's been going for about 8 months but has remained small and intimate, but is growing slowly. When Kayla asked me how many people would be there, I told her, "I can promise you there won't be more than 10 people." But that night, we broke our record, and had 14!!!!!!!!!! I told her, "Ya know I should keep you around, cuz amazing things happen when you are here!"

Here's us with Jill.