I met Jennifer at MOPS. She was friendly and nice (of course, Jennifer was the homecoming queen, she is super nice to everyone), but we didn't really get to know each other until retreat. And at retreat, I talked to her about my friend Christy, who was looking into some speech therapy for one of her sons...
Christy I met at school during the Thanksgiving lunch when Betsy and Amberleigh were in kindergarten, but we really got to be friends when both girls were on the same softball team in the spring. I always took Betsy to practice and brought along my book to read. But Christy always sat beside me and just started talking to me. And one day she mentioned Amberleigh's dance teacher to me, said her name is Lacie, and I laughed and said, yes, I know Lacie...
Lacie I have known since she was born. I can remember of being at church for a dinner of some kind (it really seems like we had a lot of church dinners when I was a kid) and Lacie was a baby sitting on the counter in some kind of car seat type deal. Lacie is six years younger than me, but she had Brooke at the same time that I had Felicity and we would sit together in church and nurse them and talk...
And somehow we all, Jennifer and Christy and Lacie and me, became close friends. We aren't quite sure the organics of it beyond that they were all friends with me, so clearly I am the linchpin.
I hadn't had a real friend outside of my sister and Nick since high school. A friend that I really call in emergencies, a friend that I text in the middle of the night, a friend who let me collapse at her house when my life fell apart at every possible seam and I was scared to be in my house alone for fear of what I might do to myself.
It's a genuine friendship that I couldn't live without.
Who would have dreamed just a couple of years ago that one of us would move away, two of us would have babies, and one of us would get divorced? Lucky me on that lovely roulette spin.
We don't get to hang out like we used to. Christy moved away, I have a full time job, and Jennifer and Lacie have babies-but when we do get together, it's all just the same as it was. We laugh a lot and act silly and talk about our kids and our families. They talk about their husbands, while I bemoan ever dating again, which they kindly act like is ridiculous.
I could not have gotten through this year without them.
It is easier to see, looking back, all of the people that have come into my life to help me to transition to who I am becoming. I am grateful to all of them. I am grateful for friends that I have reconnected with from high school, for new friends from Genesis and Village Hall and MOPs. And I am immensely grateful for these three ladies that I know that God brought into my life when he did so that when everything fell apart, I would have someone to lean on. Someone to listen. Someone to be silly and crazy with and not worry that they will think any less of me. They have seen me at my worst. They have seen me out of my mind with grief, they have seen me scared and lonely and down a dark hole. And the most important thing is that they stayed with me. They knew that I had to work this out for myself.
I can never thank them enough for knowing that being my friend meant just sitting beside me while I cried.
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