She’s 5″3, naturally a brunette (currently a red-head despite the photo at bottom), loves her two horses and coming home with cow shit on her shoes. I’m a 4″11 blonde who loves to make scrapbooks and get dressed up for a night of dancing. We’re twins. And we are absolute opposites.

We fought like brutal enemies when we were little. It’s a rule in our family that you say “I love you” before you leave one another. God forbid you never saw that person again, you would want those to be the last words they heard from you. When Emily and I fought, we would throw the F-bomb before “love” and shout it right before we slammed the door. We stole each other’s stuff, hated having to share friends in a small town and acted like bitter rivals.

Emily and I are 23 now and each passing year does nothing but bring us closer despite distance. I live in Buffalo; Emily lives in Olean while attending St. Bonaventure University and is back home in Rochester for summer vacation and breaks. We do our best to visit each other (or FaceTime/Snapchat like our lives depend on it) but it’s still tough to spend quality time together.

Sunday night we had the chance, unintentionally, to spend quite a bit of time together.

Em called me at 10:30 p.m. saying, “I’m stuck in Cleveland, the battery is about to die on my phone and I may need you to pick me up. Can you look up bus routes first?”  She and other St. Bonaventure students had gone to the Cavaliers vs. Magic game to watch St. Bonaventure alum Andrew Nicholson play. With only a few pieces to the confusing puzzle, I found that there were no trains from Cleveland to Olean to get her and her two friends home. So a road trip it was.

I got to Cleveland a little after 2 a.m. and loaded three grateful Bonnies into my car. Any initial frustrations I had subsided when I was able to catch up with my sister about school, work, family, love (of course) and laugh over jokes that make zero sense to anyone but us. It was after 5 a.m. when we pulled up to her dormitory. I decided to drive right to Buffalo instead of napping on Emily’s twin XL bed (tempting). Before I left, I got out of the car and gave my twin sister a hug.

Whenever my mom (mama saint) tells me to give someone a hug for her, she always adds in “enjoy the one back.” Of course I say, “okay, mom, I will.” And I do. But this time I felt more appreciative than ever for the hug I got back.

My sister and I are alike in the sense that we depend on ourselves first before we seek the help of others. We like to know that we can rely on ourselves. I know she would have never asked me to drive for eight straight hours unless she needed me. And that was all that mattered: she is my twin sister and she needed me.

Exhaustion didn’t matter. Money didn’t matter. (500 Miles) on the car didn’t matter.

If you’re doing something for someone you love and they are grateful for it, there’s nothing more important than that.

Family first. Always.

I couldn’t leave out a How I Met Your Mother “500 Miles” video. You’re welcome.

In March of last year I blogged about not realizing the logic of why things come into your life until they have left. To this day, I still find that to be true. However, what I love more than anything is finally realizing why those things have left; I love finding truth to my beliefs, and I love when those reasons sneak up on me. They provide me with those “Ah-ha!” moments which always seem to catch me off guard at the times when I unknowingly need them the most.

Tonight was one of those nights.

Sometimes you come across people in your life that you feel in your gut you’re just supposed to know. You have this innate feeling that your lives would mutually benefit from knowing one another. So you act on it. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, I think it’s worth the “hey, how are ya?” initiation.

You may also come across people in your life that you know, but not as personally as others. Maybe you share the same group of friends or have been involved in the same activities but just have not spent time one-on-one. Until one day you really look at that person and think, “Hmm… I know about them, but I don’t really know them.”

I was fortunate enough that Canisius College, my home away from home, brought two individuals like those mentioned above into my life. These two relatively new, yet sentimentally substantial friendships make me feel so grateful for the people and things that have left my life.

One of the quirkiest quotes I have ever come across is from the book Eat Pray Love (which is still sitting half-read on my nightstand). It goes like this:

God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies.

It’s underlined in black ink on page 22 of my personal copy. So often we come to find the silver lining of a horrible series of events in the most unexpected of places. Life can be so sarcastically deceptive in that way. But if you have a good sense of humor, you learn to roll with those punches and actually appreciate them.

If you can be open-minded enough to recognize those gut feelings you have and then be bold enough to take action when you deem those feelings worthy, I have no doubt in my mind that life will reward you with an “Ah-ha!” moment of your own. That moment may come in the form of a new friendship, a chance to act on a dream you may have been too scared to chase, or simply being able to able to look back on your past and realize it’s not a part of your present for a reason. That moment will come. Until then, move forward with an honest heart filled with nothing but good intentions. That in itself is worthy of a silver lining.