a story of true friendship: rebekah and ruthanne.

this is probably the longest post I've ever written. fair warning.

Happy wednesday, friends! :) So, I don't think I've mentioned this yet...but in exactly 7 days (eep!) I will be in Texas visiting my best friend! Exciting much? Ah! 

We have probably the coolest friendship story ever, so today I wanted to kind of share that with you, because it is so sweet, and something that her and I both know was a one-in-a-million kind of thing. Ready?

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Lets go back to December 25th, 2008, for a few minutes, shall we?

That was the day I first had any contact with my best friend.

And you know what? it was on a message boards forum site for Nancy Drew computer games.

Around "the boards" as all of us dedicated members so fondly referred to it as, I was "Caroline". Partly because of an internet safety thing, and partly because I wanted to see what going by my first name was like. 

These message boards were dedicated solely to fans of the Nancy Drew computer games made by the company HerInteractive. 

There were separate sub-forums for basically everything. There was a review and help board for each game released, and then the "fun" parts of it. Forums for writing alternate endings to the games, creating post signatures for people to use, where you opened up a thread and it was called your "signature "shop". There were forums for games, and reviews, and petitions for new games, etc. 

Anyway. Christmas day, 2008. Right. 

I was an avid writer of the Alternate Endings I mentioned above. I loved getting to re write the endings of the games however I wanted. I was browsing the boards after the Christmas madness was over, and clicked on one Alternate Ending by a certain "NanDrew78". I read, and was intrigued, and totally smitten. There began the friendship.

This girl's "name" was MnM...or Maudie.

The rules of the boards were very strict. No private messaging, no last names allowed, no email exchanges, no threads just for talking about your personal stuff,  and absolutely no links to any url that wasn't part of HerInteractive's site. We found loopholes in it all, of course. We'd figure out how to get the personal stuff in and still abide by the rules, but never had any contact outside of the boards.

About a year after this, almost exactly, the company joined Twitter. Naturally, all of us "true" ND fans did too, to keep up with everything. This was probably one of the best things ever. A new thread went up saying that the company had, and giving a disclaimer about how they're not responsible for anything that happens because of that and yada yada yada. None of us cared what they said...we were on it. Being as smart as we all were, we joined, made our accounts private, put our board username in our profile, and then follow the other people who did the same and also followed the company. Brilliance, I know.

Over the first year I got into contact with so many of my friends. Like, real contact. We were all constantly checking HeR's followers to see if anyone new had joined, and frequently, they had. We would end up sending a bajillion direct messages to each other, because of the character limit, then we'd move on to email...and then skype..and then text. I can honestly say I met some of my favorite people ever during those two years. 

When "Maudie" joined twitter, I was so excited. I found our her real name was Rebekah, or Beka for short, and I told her my name was technically Ruthanne. I found out she lived in Texas, and she found out I lived in California. We were bummed to say the least.

We ended up sharing our hearts with each other over DM's for a few months, and became so close. One thing led to another, and we began sending emails and skyping, and eventually started sending each other birthday and Christmas presents. 

During the Summer of 2010, Beka started talking and telling me about a trip they might be taking to the east coast. October came around and it was official. The day they left for DC she tweeted about their drive. She would tell us what town she was in now, or what state. I, being the detective I was, (ha), looked up on Google maps what the trip looked like. And nothing she said matched up. 

On top of that, my mother was acting weird. So weird. And Beka wasn't really posting pictures of the trip - something I thought strange. The girl is a photographer's daughter. She. Likes. Pictures.

My parents told all of us kids that they would be going out to dinner with a client/friend of my dad's that night, and we may or may not go too, so to get ready. That was really weird for them. It's always either "we're going" or "we're not going". But, I got ready anyway. 

I was sitting on the couch with Addy, who was almost 2 months old at the time, and noticed that my mom kept glancing at the driveway, as if looking for someone. I began to look too, all while still watching tv. I saw car lights gleam against the wall...and tried to contain myself. I had had to get on my mom's computer earlier that day, and saw an email for Beka's mom, Vicki, to my mom. I was trying not to be too excited about what I thought may be happening, just in case it didn't...but that didn't work too well. I went back to my sisters' room to get Addy something, and came back out to the kitchen. I was waiting with the baby when my mom went and opened the door, and called my name. 

I turned around and there stood my best friend.

can you tell we'd been crying? about ten minutes after our first real hug took place. 

I squealed. And probably almost dropped the baby. As quickly as I could possible hand Addy off to someone I did, and hugged that girl and cried. We both did. It was like everything in the world was finally right. I hugged her parents, too, and just looked at her in disbelief. 

on our way to dinner - sooo full of joy!

We ended up having dinner with her family that night, and then spending the next day together at Tahoe.

so happy.

having her with us was just like having another sister! ♥

we're both notorious posers. all day. every day.

I have never met another girl I love this much.

Ever.

We are so close, and truly sisters. I know she's got my back, even though she's all the way in Texas. Rarely does a day go by when we don't talk - there is always an "I love you!" to be said, and if either of us need prayer, the other one's got it.

This is my best friend, and I thank God all the time for blessing me with her friendship.