Friendship

On Sunday morning, bright and early, my best friend pulls out of the driveway I've driven up and down at least a hundred times in the last year and heads for her new home in another state.  I'm not quite ready to let her go!! :-)

You'd think it would be easy....I have lots of friends! Quilting friends, church friends, school friends, homeschooling friends -- and even Words with Friends friends! :-D

But it's a very rare thing when all the planets converge and all those friendship properties collide in one person! Jennifer has been friend, confidante, sounding board (probably a sounding BORED from her end! LOL), networker, quilter, shopper, purse maker (she came to my house and said, "We're sewing those purses you've had cut out for over a year TODAY!  Here, sew this seam!")...

We go to church together, quilt club together, quilt shows, homeschool events, Boy Scouts....
She even has a son named Sam!!  Could any two people be more destined to become friends?

Her boys and my Sam were best friends.  Luke and Sam were nearly inseparable, and my Emily is big sister to all of them.  Last fall we traveled with them to Mississippi for their family reunion, stopping by Operation Christmas Child (the shoebox people! :-D) to serve on the way home.

Our families ate dinner together tonight and I gave her a "scrapbook" quilt memento of our combined history (this is the "sneak peaks" I've been showing):

It has all the states we traveled together. "In-jokes" our families have shared.  (We'd laugh to split a gut over the Geico commercial with the militant therapist who asks, "You know what makes me sad...?  You do!" he answers himself! LOL).  A World Changers mission trip emblem; "Yo tengo hambre!" (I am hungry!! from teenage boys in the backseat of my van from KY all the way to Louisiana! LOL).  Runners for our boys and their cross country races and 5K's. Names and words and phrases and memories in the borders.  Favorite restaurants and funny experiences.

When Sam died, Jennifer and her boys were on their way to meet her husband, who had already started his new job there, to house-hunt in their new locale.  She was past Chattanooga, more than 3 hours from us.  When I called with the news that Monday morning, she immediately turned the car around -- put their life on hold!! -- and came to me.  And stayed all week. And served.  And cried with me and for me. 

She is beautiful and talented, wise, compassionate and practical, a gifted leader, teacher, organizer and networker.  She is wonderful at putting people together.  And I am missing her already.  We'll remain close, of course, but I will miss the everyday things!  I will miss her boys! Our lives -- and now our memories! -- are so intertwined....It's as if she is taking not only herself and her family but also a part of us, too. 

In Scripture there was such a friend.

The son of King Saul, Jonathan, befriended a shepherd named David.  "Jonathan," 1 Samuel 18:1 says, "became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself."  Later in chapter 20, Jonathan chooses David's welfare and future as king over his own (much to Saul's dismay and disappointment!).  When Jonathan warns David of the danger of King Saul,

"...David got up from the south side of the stone and bowed down before Jonathan three times, with his face to the ground. Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most. Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the LORD, saying, ‘The LORD is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever.’” Then David left, and Jonathan went back to the town." (1 Samuel 20:41-42 NIV)

Only God can bring people together in such a way.  I am so blessed to have Jennifer as a friend!!  I hope I AM such a friend!!

Blessings,