Honestly, Sandie

*This story is rich and reflective, and the song I paired with it is *Shallow as covered by Tommee Profitt.

Aquamarine is known as the stone of safe passage. Sailors carried it across rough water, believing it would protect them from the uncertainty of the sea. Which feels appropriate because I’ve been crossing rough water with Aquamarine since 2010.

We met in MOPS, back when our kids were little and we were all pretending we knew what we were doing. We didn’t. Not even a little. We were surviving on coffee, goldfish crackers, interrupted sleep, playdates, and the collective hope that nobody would discover we were making most of this parenting thing up as we went.

Our kids became friends. Then we became friends.

And just like that, a relationship set sail.

Not the dramatic kind. Not the instant-best-friends kind. The kind built on ordinary Thursdays. The kind built on showing up. The kind built on years.

At this point we’ve seen each other through enough life that modesty is mostly a technicality. We’ve talked about marriage, motherhood, friendship, faith, disappointment, the dreams that worked out, the ones that didn’t, the things people post online, and the things they only tell a handful of people.

Aquamarine is one of the few people who has seen almost every version of me. Not Church Sandie. Not Photographer Sandie. Not Writer Sandie. Just Sandie. The whole messy collection.

And just like that, sixteen years goes by.

That’s the strange thing about long friendships. You don’t notice them happening. One day they’re new, and then suddenly they’ve outlasted jobs, seasons, schools, houses, ministries, hairstyles, and whatever phase we were all going through in 2013. Pregnancy. The phase was probably pregnancy.

Aquamarine and I have a phrase.

“And just like that…”

That’s it. That’s the phrase.

And no, before anyone asks, I’ve never watched Sex and the City. This belongs entirely to us.

It’s what we say when life changes. When a season ends. When something you thought would last forever suddenly doesn’t. When kids grow up. When plans fall apart. When everything shifts.

And just like that, nothing is the same.

The funny thing about Aquamarine is that she usually sees the pattern before I do. I’ll spend twenty minutes explaining something. Maybe thirty. For real, probably a few hours. I’ll walk through every detail, every angle, every possibility, every exception. And she’ll listen patiently. Then she’ll say something that cuts straight through all of it.

Not because she’s trying to fix me.

Not because she’s trying to win.

Because she sees it.

That’s her gift.

She sees it.

Aquamarine left church before I did. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Not with a campaign or a speech or a recruitment strategy. She just quietly walked a different direction.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand. I was still trying to make things work. Still trying to find a better way to stay. Still a ride-or-die soldier convinced that if I worked harder, loved harder, served harder, or sacrificed harder, maybe everything would eventually make sense. And of course I was praying for her return, because that was what we were taught to do. Don’t worry about where people have gone. Just make sure they know they’re always welcome back.

Aquamarine never tried to drag me toward her conclusions. She never needed me to agree with her. She never needed me to catch up. She trusted that I’d find my own way.

Looking back, that might be one of the greatest gifts she ever gave me.

She saw the version of me that thought working harder could fix almost anything. The version that believed every problem had a solution if I just cared enough, served enough, loved enough, or sacrificed enough. She saw me raising babies, building a career, carrying responsibilities that looked impressive on paper and exhausting in real life. She saw the version of me trying to hold everything together, and eventually the version of me realizing I couldn’t.

And somehow she never needed me to stay the same.

I think that’s what Aquamarine means.

Safe passage.

Not rescue.

Not certainty.

Not somebody standing on the shore shouting directions.

Just someone willing to stay in the boat while you figure it out.

Someone who isn’t afraid of rough water. Someone who isn’t afraid of questions. Someone who doesn’t need all the answers before they’re willing to remain.

In the summer of 2023, we talked about what happens when people leave. How entire chapters of life can end without anyone really acknowledging it. How people disappear from places they once occupied every week. How friendships can become memories almost overnight. Not because anyone is angry. Not because there was a fight. Not because there is some dramatic story waiting to be told. Life simply shifts.

And just like that…

Everything is different.

I remember asking who reached out when she left. Who noticed. Who came looking.

She couldn’t really think of anyone.

That answer stayed with me.

Not because it was cruel.

Because it was ordinary.

Life moves. Kids need dinner. Work starts Monday. Calendars fill up. Entire seasons end before we realize they’re ending. And sometimes people drift beyond the edge of the frame before either side realizes what’s happening.

I think one of the deepest fears we carry isn’t being hated. It’s being forgotten.

Being absent long enough that people simply assume we’re busy. That we’ll eventually be back. That someone else will make the call. That someone else will check in.

But friendship isn’t built on assumptions.

It’s built on presence.

And Aquamarine has spent sixteen years showing up.

Maybe that’s why Shallow feels like the right song for this story. Not because either of us spent sixteen years standing in the deep end, but because every time life offered the easier conversation, we somehow found ourselves having the real one instead. The honest one. The uncomfortable one. The one underneath the one.

The older I get, the more I think that’s where friendship actually lives.

Not on the surface.

Down where the masks stop working.

Down where people tell the truth.

Down where someone can look at the mess of your life and say, “I see it too.”

For a long time, I thought our phrase was about endings.

“And just like that…”

A season ends. A chapter closes. A version of yourself disappears. But sitting here writing this, I think we had it backwards. The thing that surprises me most isn’t everything that changed.

It’s what remained.

The exhausted moms from MOPS became women with grown kids. Entire seasons came and went. Dreams changed shape. Life did what life does and kept moving.

And just like that… Sixteen years happened.

I learned something while researching aquamarine.

Before anyone ever sees the gemstone, miners have to remove everything around it. Layers of dirt. Rock. Pressure. Time. The gem is there the whole time. You just can’t see it yet.

That’s why this stone feels right. Because life has spent sixteen years stripping things away.

The jobs.

The roles.

The expectations.

The places we thought we’d always be. The versions of ourselves we thought would last forever. And somehow, after all of it, the friendship is still there. Not because nothing changed.

Because everything did.

This is what safe passage really means. Not avoiding the rough water. Finding out what remains after you’ve crossed it.

For years I thought our phrase belonged to endings.

“And just like that…”

A season ends. A chapter closes. A version of yourself disappears. But sitting here now, I think we had it backwards. The thing that surprises me most isn’t everything that changed.

It’s what didn’t.

The exhausted moms from MOPS became women with grown kids. Entire seasons came and went. Dreams changed shape. Life did what life does and kept moving.

And just like that…

Sixteen years happened.

Aquamarine forms in relatively shallow places. I love that.

Not because the stone lacks depth.

Because it doesn’t. The depth comes later. The depth comes from time. From pressure. From weather. From surviving things. From becoming. We formed in the shallows.

Ordinary Thursdays.

The kind of places people overlook because they don’t seem important at the time.

But we took the rock with us.

Through all the years. Through all the changes. Through all the versions of ourselves we never saw coming. And now here we are. Not standing where we started. Not living the lives we imagined. Not even asking all the same questions.

Just two women who met in the shallows and somehow ended up navigating the deep, wide ocean of life together.

And just like that… You find one of the most beautiful stones right there in your pocket.