Friends

Sometimes I look around at my friends and I am amazed at all of my friendships! God has truly blessed me with some of the greatest friends and I love how different they all are. God uses each one of them to teach me new things and stretch me, most of the time without me even realizing it! I am going to talk about two of them. I have other friends, but these two are the ones I have regular communication with and the ones that know me best.
The first one - this friend lives five hours away from me, but we talk very often. She is a working mother of two and loves being a professional. She is the friend who drove the three hours to visitation when Adam's mom passed away and just hung out with me for like four hours. I didn't even ask her. She just called and said she was on her way, dropped her kids off at her in-laws house and came. It was so touching and meant so much. We were friends in college, but not that close. In 1998, I moved to Mississippi, away from everyone I knew, for Adam to go to law school and she moved to Tunnel Hill, IL for her husband to go to school. Our friendship deepened and grew through that experience. We talked on the phone for hours and our friendship grew. She now lives in Memphis and we only get to see each other about twice a year, but we continue to email and call each other and I love her like a sister.
The second one - this friend is a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom of five (with probably more coming in the future). She is the most organized and creative person I know. She convicts me daily with how she cares for her family and home. She is my "natural" friend - if she saw how much processed food was in my home, she would probably faint. Well, not really, because she knows me very well. She is the opposite of me in so many ways. She nurses her babies for at least a year, I count down the days when I can put a bottle with formula in my baby's mouth! (judge me if you want to, I don't care...I've had four babies and they all have felt loved and are healthy, so I can confidently say that I absolutely hate nursing without feeling like a bad mother) She soaks beans during the day to cook for her family for supper. Me, well...I'm all about frozen beans and peas. Just the other day she was talking about how long brown rice takes to cook and my response was, "It takes no time in the boil-in-a-bag!" She homeschools and I am enjoying my two big kids school experience. (It works for us right now. I've stopped making definitive statements. The quickest way for me to guarantee that God will call me to homeschool is to say something stupid like, "I'll NEVER homeschool." Nope. I think I'll stick with "School is working for us right now.") She has her kids on a chore schedule. I get my kids to help out with housework, but it is definitely not organized at all. They watch almost no TV, we watch some TV. She is so creative. She makes clothes and purses and does neat stuff to teach her kids. Not to mention that she has their family finances in such order that I think she could probably fix just about any financial crisis a fortune 500 company faced. She is the person (apart from Adam) that I have been completely transparent with. She knows all my personality flaws and still loves me! She never judges me. She responds with love and with practical things to try to solve the problem. She is the one who came immediately to my house just to sit with me when Adam's mom passed away and he had already headed home. She showed up at my house with chocolate (always a necessity) and things to do in the car for the kids since I would be driving the three hours alone with the three big kids. Then she kept Annabelle from Friday to Monday so I could go to the funeral without having to worry about a 2 1/2 year old. Then, when Adam and I went to Texas, she kept Annabelle from Thursday to Monday and even kept the boys as well that Sunday night because our flight got delayed and I didn't have anyone to keep the boys! (remember she already has 5 kids of her own!) I know I can call her with any crisis and she will come running. She and I are so different, but it makes our friendship so much fun!
BUT, one thing I have in common with each of these ladies is our love for Jesus Christ and our determination to instill Christian values in our children. We strive to love our husbands and our children so that they see Christ in us. We all love a great Christian praise song and can always talk about how a particular sermon impacted us. Or how something we read in the Bible taught us something new. I love these women as sisters (and we are sisters in Christ!) and I am thankful to God each day that He has brought these amazing women in my life. I am thankful that He loves me enough to bless me with such friends.