We sat this week in our gym clothes and tennis shoes, nine of us talking about friendship and what makes one sweet. And the overriding word that resonated is expectations. Friends don’t have them, we all agreed. We just know and believe and that faith in each other, it roots deep in the intimacy of long lasting friendship.
I sat in my seat, rubbing the ViBella jewelry my best friend just bought me earlier that week, at a retreat where a piece of my heart still resides. She took it back to exchange it before giving it to me, thinking she was being indecisive in her thoughtfulness. But God nudged her to do it.
Because when I opened it, she gave me the same necklace a kindred soul picked for herself and only God knew it came with a message. A confirmation for each of us that yes, He has something in mind for our friendship. He was already speaking to each of us individually, picking us out among the crowds and bringing our random thoughts together, our mouths drawn open in the serendipity. That necklace wasn’t just a random pick, it is a sacred and holy gift. A reminder that God speaks through friendship. The water that makes our lives bloom with vibrant beauty.
I told all nine about the way my friend reminds me continually, with love and honesty, of how God loves me one person at a time. She points out words and phrases, turning seemingly random moments into everyday miracles. Miracles I sluff off as ordinary kindness and “Oh, she probably says that to everyone.”
And as I listen to the stories from nine in my hometown, peeling back layers of friendship, I get a text from a friend on the other side of the country. We’re known by each other, we shared community before kids, house payments and writing. She’s telling me what the Lord said to her on my behalf as she prays earnestly for me as a writer. It’s something we do for each other daily.
I think about the tears I’ve shed over these past ten years, of loneliness and lack of friendship in my back yard. “Why God, don’t I have friends like this where I grocery shop and garden?”
Then I realize the gift. That heart friendship transcends place and time. He handpicks the beauty and extends his arm holding a vibrant bouquet of unique soul ties. Their color and texture exactly what my heart longs for. The flower of friendship doesn’t just come from the grocery store, each beautiful stem is handpicked near a copse, in a tiny ravine, on the windy shores of the sea at the moment when the light hits the face of God, at just the right time.
Expectations don’t come with the friends God chooses. And that is what makes them sweet.
I’m joining Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday today on the one word prompt: Friend. I just couldn’t resist after a week of reveling in it.
What have you learned about friendship as it evolves and changes with the seasons of life?
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Geese, Girlfriends and Graceful Gifts
It was the serendipity of it all. The way I wrote about the geese collecting outside my cottage window after a storm and then she commented about the book she was reading. “But this reminds me of that book, and of how little in life goes the way we had planned, and how opening yourself up is the best way of all…” Deidra said.
It was like threading a bead on the necklace of moments with His imprint attached. I wore the words around my neck for days.
Life’s dealt a bevy of disappointments over the past year. Dreams swirl down the drain in the turned backs of the faithful, leaving fragments of soapy bubbles clinging the sides of the sink. And I think about her words. How little in life goes the way we plan, but opening yourself up is the best way of all.
I’m practicing this like a daily sacrament at the altar.
I step into the musty smell of floor to ceiling paperbacks, ask the saleslady with the fuschia lips if they have that book, the one that sparked the comment thread. She tells me it shows up on the computer that they have one copy. It’s not on the shelf. We scour the back of the store, the middle, the back room. Nothing.
She puts me on the list, in case someone brings in a used copy.
And as I place my stack on the counter, behind the tourist with the ponytail and Coppertone perfume, the saleslady holds up the book I was looking for, in the tourist’s stack. “Is this the one you were looking for,” she smiles over the top of our heads.
It’s why we couldn’t find it, it was already on the counter waiting to go home with someone else.
The tourist turns to me and says, “Here you can have it.”
No, I tell her shaking my head. You take it, I have plenty to read.
She insists, pushing the book into my hands. And I take it. Tell her its my birthday and I’ll consider her kindness as a gift. Her children sigh in unison, like their getting a gift too.
And that graceful gesture of a stranger, it was like the play of kindness acted out for an audience of strangers, Jesus in the leading role. That saleslady, she remembers it in her eyes, every time I go to the store.
Because little in life goes the way we plan, but opening yourself up is the best way of all. You never know what the kindness of Jesus might look like on you today.
Joining the Five Minute Friday community with the one word prompt: Graceful. Let’s be honest, it was a tad over five minutes for me today.
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