You are the Story I Tell: Rex

I truly believe that the greatest gift that you can give to another person is to genuinely let them know that who they are and what they do matters. It has been my goal in 2014 to become a more thoughtful person. A string of deaths to some individuals who positively affected my life led me to conceive this series. As the words to my favorite song go, “And for those who have stood by my side, you are the story I tell.” You are the words and pages to my story.

Over the course of the next several months, I will be writing open letters to those who have positively impacted my story. I’m not going to lie. It is my goal to make you cry, not out of grief or pain but out of the realization that you do truly matter. I am not doing this in order of how important you are to me. For the most part (other than birthdays or other important events), the letters will be done in a random order. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you come away from this with the realization that you are extremely important to me.

Dear Rex,

Out of all of us in our core group of friends, I’d say my friendship with you grew the most organically. With the other guys, we saw each other in class every day. It was easy to develop friendships that way. Sure, we were on the basketball team together one year, but most of that time was spent goofing around on the bench until we finally got into the game. I wasn’t ever in Bible Quizzing with you, so our friendship didn’t develop that way. I didn’t get close to you as an in-route to Thea, so it didn’t develop that way either! It just sort of happened over the summer of 2003. Your presence helped make that summer one of the best of my life.

You are the one friend whose people skills I am most envious of. Sure, I’m alright with kids and a small amount of people I know and trust, but I’ve never seen you off your game. You could go into a room and instantly make everyone feel favorably about you. You’re definitely in the right field of work.

I am very thankful that our friendship was able to develop and grow during our later high school years. You’ve had a knack for listening to me and making me feel better about myself. At the same time, you’ve always helped me to think about my choices and to consider the consequences of them. Not only have you been my friend, but you have often served as a counselor and sounding board. I haven’t thanked you enough for that.

You, perhaps more than anyone else, changed the way I think about people. The Jakob I used to be was more judgmental and set in his ways. I couldn’t see beyond the choices I didn’t understand. Because of that, we didn’t have much contact for nearly a year. When you finally told me the reason why and told me I was one of the two people you were most apprehensive to talk to about it, I felt terrible. I finally realized that people were going to think and act differently than me, but that’s okay. I don’t have to understand every decision that everyone makes. Instead, I realized that I have to care more about who people are than what they do. Thank you for making me a better person in that regard.

We’ve talked about this before, but probably the best part of our friendship is that at any given point, we can pick it right up and it was like we never missed a beat. Our friendship has gone past the point that we need to see or talk to each other on a regular basis in order to maintain it. This has served us well as your journey has taken you across the country. I have no doubt in my mind that our friendship will be able to continue that way, and in the event I find someone willing to marry me, I would be honored to have you as one of my groomsmen.

Thank you for being a hard worker, a great son and brother, and a caring friend. Thank you for helping me to better understand people, and thank you for helping me to better understand myself.

All the best,
Jakob