People say the nicest things about you on two particular occasions: your wedding and your funeral. Fortunately for us, my friends and I have been passing through the wedding stage recently, which is why The Husband and I found ourselves aboard a plane heading for Fayetteville, Arkansas this past weekend to toast one of my New York crew’s nuptials.

Among the highlights: we stayed at an inn that The Sis informed me, upon our return, was probably haunted. (She does research on high-end hotels. It’s a hobby; plus, she never knows when she might need a place to crash for the night.) We walked around in the Arkansas heat and watched pledge candidates travel from fraternity house to fraternity house, looking ridiculously young to my twice-their-age eyes though I could swear I just graduated from good ole BSC last year. We overate and overdrank. We danced to a DJ. We sat awkwardly in a biker bar named The Rowdy Beaver (hee) for about fifteen minutes before realizing they don’t serve our kind (people with sleeves and without tattoos). We caught up with old friends and made fun of each other mercilessly (you’re welcome, BM). We discussed Penn State (you’re welcome again, BM). We texted each other pictures of the creepy portrait hanging in all our rooms (go to hell, KM). We drank Snickerdoodle coffee.

By the time Sunday morning rolled around, I was absent much of the water in my body  but full of memories and material for future bribes. (Let’s be clear that if any of my friends ever want to run for future office? So screwed.) Throughout the weekend, I kept mentally revisiting my life in New York with these people: our ups and downs and the twists and curves that led each of us to where we are now. Weddings and funerals may get all the good lines, but real life happens around and between them. Though we girls are scattered around the country now and may not be able to order in from the diner together after a night out (or may not have many nights out anymore), I can’t wait to navigate this part of our lives together. I can’t wait to complain about our husbands (obviously I have to make up material in order to participate as TH is perf). I can’t wait to see what our babies look like. I can’t wait to be wives and mothers and grown-ass women together. God help us. (Spoiler alert: he will.)

There was a moment at the end of the reception when the familiar chords of “Empire State of Mind” blasted from the DJ booth and I let myself be cheesy as hell for a few minutes, belting out the words and remembering the time I met Jay-Z and how it means we’re best friends now, not to mention the other million memories that song inspires: runs around Central Park, late nights in dubious bars; rooftop parties at the bride’s place. For a good hot second, I felt that familiar ache return more powerfully than ever; I imagined TH and The Kid and I strolling down Park Avenue to meet Jay-Z and Blue for brunch and going to see Tim Keller afterward and I thought to myself: Maybe? Maybe, just one day, that could happen.

It was crazy to even think it. And not crazy at all. Because a grace that can bring a group of people from every corner of the country together, mash them up and take them to Italy and the Jersey Shore and marry them off, create lifelong friendships and secret stories and keep it all going now–that is a grace big enough for anything. A grace big enough to turn a song into an anthem, and an anthem into a hymn.