Goodbye, My Friend, Crystal

Crystal & Jennifer chatting it up at Jackson's Pumpkin Farm, Fall 1999.

Crystal has been one of my best buds since we met and immediately hit it off in February of 1999 when I began attending Owego Nazarene Church. She was eight years younger than me, but we had so much in common: we lived on the same road and had kids almost the exact same age, and her personality complimented mine to a "T". We quickly began hanging out every day, doing fun stuff with the kids by day and scrapbooking or crafting by night.

It put a big dent in our face-time when she and her husband moved several towns away but our friendship endured and we regularly found a way to get together and kept in steady contact as our kids got older and we moved on through our stages of life.

I was heartbroken when I learned this morning that my good friend, Crystal, died in a car accident. She was driving with her youngest boy, Ethan, when another driver hit her head-on. We are praying for Ethan to fully recover from his injuries and for her other two kids, James and Madalyn. Crystal also left behind her husband Thad, who she always described to me as "the love of her life."

I'm sure I will always have a Crystal-shaped hole in my heart.