Micki! Micki and I have been friends since August of 2003, 12+ years! She was my first MC friend and the first new person I met at MC. If you’ve been around me any amount of time you know I found my first group of forever friends at Mississippi College. I’ve wrote about my sweet friend Micki here before (read that post here)! We have a big, awesome group of friends we call The Friendgroup (that will get their own post soon), but Micki was the first one from that group that I met and clung too. We all met at MC or at a camp where most of us worked at some point. Micki and I actually became BFF’s pretty much instantly right before we both started MC. We both did two years at different community colleges and transferred to MC. The summer before we both started MC, we did summer missions in different parts of the U.S. It used to be a requirement for summer missionaries to attend a state wide debriefing. Micki and I met at summer missions debriefing, realized we were both headed to MC soon and didn’t know many, if any, people, and decided we were going to be friends. We went to every Welcome Week and rush event together, and rather quickly began to meet our other friends and the founding “members” of The Friendgroup!

We were pretty much inseparable all through our MC years. Neither us had a sense of direction to save our lives OR cell phones our first year. Somehow we always ended up going places by ourselves. We usually got lost and everyone always questioned why the let us go places together! College was the best and such a great place to start friendships and for friendships to flourish, but I think many of our Friendgroup friendships just got even stronger after college. We made our first adult decisions together, we made a lot of our first adult mistakes together, we experienced a lot of the hard firsts of adult life together! Six months after I graduated, I ended up in New Orleans for seminary without Micki or any of my girls! Micki sent me with Bath and Body Works lotion and soap for my sink to make it homey. I lucked up majorly when the boy that Micki started dating (her now husband) went to the same school I did! I really don’t think I wouldn’t have made it in New Orleans without Micki’s frequent visits to see me (and Andy). And then… THEY GOT MARRIED! And lived on campus where I lived!

I practically lived at their apartment and Micki was there for me for A LOT of really hard things that happened during that season. Adult life is just full of hard things. Death, loss, transition, moving, moving, more moving. Micki taught me the best unpacking tip ever – watch Harry Potter while you unpack! It makes it a lot more fun and you can make goals to be finished by the end of a certain movie. Speaking of Harry Potter, Micki was also the one who made me watch it/read it! I claimed to hate reading before Micki forced Harry Potter into my hands. There isn’t a significant (or insignificant) part of my life lived since 2003 that Micki doesn’t know about, whether she was there for it or not. There isn’t a thing I don’t want to share with her. I still tell her about every crush I’ve ever have and every insignificant thing that happens just like we did in college. Fast forward to now. She lives in Georgia with her super adorable family of four (Alice and Asher were added to the Micki + Andy mix), and I live in Mississippi.

We text frequently, talk when we can, get to see each other far less than either of us likes, but when we do get to visit it still feels like we’re just as close as we were when we were spending every moment together in each other’s dorm rooms. It feels like home. She’s my biggest blogger fan, trusts my fashion advice more than she should, loves her little family fiercely, is an amazing mom and wife, loves Jesus with all of her heart, and will always be one of my life lines. We’ve laughed together (oh man how we’ve laughed), cried together, been parts of each other’s families, spent holidays together, and really will be friends forever. AND we’re going to Harry Potter World together in February! I love my friend Micki and if you have a friend like her, your life is better because of it.

This is day part of my 31 People(s) I Love series. I’ll be writing about 31 people/peoples that I adore. Click here if you would like a list of all the posts in this series.