The Parking Lot
There are some places you never expect to return to.
Twenty-five years ago, I worked a cancer center in high school for class credits. It was my first real job. I spent my afternoons cutting the lead molds used for radiation treatments. At seventeen, I didn’t think much about what happened beyond those walls. It was simply where I worked.
During my breaks, my best friend Joel would stop by. We’d sit in the parking lot and talk about everything that seemed so important back then. Crushes. College. The excitement of heading to the University of Florida. The lives we dreamed of building. We were certain the future was waiting for us, and we couldn’t wait to meet it.
I can still picture those afternoons.
The parking lot.
The laughter.
Two teenagers who believed they had all the time in the world.
Joel and I met during my junior year of high school. I was the new girl at a school where it seemed everyone else had grown up together. Walking into that can be intimidating, but he never made me feel like an outsider. From the very beginning, he welcomed me in. He became one of those rare friends who quietly stays through every season. My prom date. One of my biggest cheerleaders, a constant in a life that has changed in more ways than either of us could have imagined.
Neither of us knew then that twenty-five years later we would find ourselves outside another cancer center.
Only this time, it wasn’t where I worked.
It was where I had become the patient.
Life has a way of unfolding in ways we never see coming.
This week, Joel flew in simply to be here. There wasn’t an agenda. Nothing to fix. No perfect words to say.
He sat at my kitchen island.
He cooked for me.
He loved on Brooks as if he’d known him his whole life.
He listened.
He laughed with me.
He cried with me.
He held space for whatever the day brought.
And today, he walked beside me as I went for my MRI.
There have been moments over the past week when I’ve felt strong. Moments where I’ve been filled with peace and gratitude. And then there are the quiet moments when the weight of it all catches up with me, and I find myself wondering how this became my story.
In those moments, I’ve been reminded that one of God’s greatest gifts is often the people He places beside us.
People who don’t try to take away the pain.
People who simply refuse to let you carry it alone.
Twenty-five years ago, we sat in a parking lot dreaming about the future.
Today, we sat in another one.
The future looks different than either of us imagined.
But one thing hasn’t changed.
I’m still not facing it alone.
Meanwhile…
I’m learning that some friendships aren’t measured by how often you see each other, but by who quietly shows up when life asks more of you than you ever expected.
Joel, thank you for showing up all those years ago, and thank you for showing up now.
I’ll never have the words to tell you what your friendship has meant to me.
With love, in the meanwhile.
