Posts Tagged ‘girlfriends’

I am blessed with sisters, biological and chosen. I have some radical sisters. I have some conservative sisters too. Sisters who have promised to defend me even when I am wrong and who will walk beside me through all times of my life the good and the bad. They will wade into the deep water with me and help me reach dry land. My sisters will stand in the rain with me, sit in the silence with me, yell over the noise with me, and speak to my inner child like only another woman can. They will eat chocolate, drink wine and complain with me about not losing weight. My sisters will notice my new shirt, haircut or lip gloss. They will tell me when something looks good and when it doesn’t. My sisters will let me know when there is something in my teeth, my hair or nose. They pass down the word to all of my other sisters when I am hurting, make a human life line and pray with me through it all. We share our dreams of living in an all women commune together someday, where all of the dirty socks are in the hamper and the toilet seats are always left down. They remember what is important to me. They share recipes, and secret miracle cures. Some of them I have shared my whole life with and some I have known for just a little while. Some I talk to everyday and some I may have not talked to in a couple of years, but still we are sisters. None of them are exactly the same, some very different from each other, some are younger than me some are older, some are skinny some are not, some cuss and drink some would never do either of those, some have quiet voices and some scream a lot! Some are blond, brunette and red heads, and some of them have been all three. Some of them live right down the street and some a cross the country. And that is exactly how God designed it, my circle of sisters, He uses them to hug me, tickle me and wipe away my tears. They are His voice, His hands and feet. They are the reality of “you are never alone, for I am with you all the days of your life”. They are His gift to me everyday as a reminder of His love for me. They are my sisters.

If you have ever flown on an airplane then you know right before take off the flight attendant s go through a safety demonstration covering how secure your seatbelt, where the emergency exits are located and how to use your seat cushion as a flotation device…really a flotation device but I’m not even going over water. This causes me to become even more concerned about my flight on so many different levels! One other thing they cover is what to do if there is a sudden loss of pressure in the airplane. These little yellow air masks drop, and you put it on and breathe, but they always stress the importance of securing your mask first, before helping a smaller child or someone who is dependant on you. As, I listened to this recently, I started to think just how much that is against almost everything I know as a mom, daughter, and girlfriend.

I am not trying to be the martyr here, it is just the way I am. I always am thinking of my children’s needs before my own. I spend a lot of time running myself ragged trying to get everyone where they need to be, help with homework, keep the house somewhat together and provide a nutritious meal every evening.(Ok, not so much on the meal thing!) I think society has condition us to always be about putting others first. I’m not trying to say that is a bad thing but I need to be able to put others first in a caring and loving way and I can tell you now if I haven’t done for myself its gonna get ugly.

One time a very good friend of mine was organizing some giving projects for our small group of friends and I can remember thinking, “buy them chickens, what? I don’t know what I am going to make for dinner either!”….so I may have missed the point that the chickens were for a whole village and I have an income and plenty of food in my frig! I told you it can get ugly, real ugly.

So I have tried to become more diligent with doing something for myself every once in a while. It doesn’t need to be extravagant, take a nap and sleep diagonal across the bed just because you can, buy your favorite treat and hide it from everyone else and when you need one go grab one, (it’s a secret life I know but it can be soooo rewarding) or get together with a group of girlfriends whom you haven’t seen in a long time and act like you are 12 again!!! That’s what I did and where I was headed when the flight attendant started telling me to make sure my mask was securely fixed and in place before I helped anyone else. And truthfully, I love naps diagonal or otherwise and I have a bag of mini Heath bars hidden in my cupboard as I write this….shhhhh.

Why does tan fat look better than plain fat? These are the things that can consume my day….. The fat is still there, hiding I guess behind the “dark shadows” of my ever so seemingly taut skin. Oh yeah its there! My teenager reminded me, not that I really needed to be reminded, when he bumped into me the other day, as I bent over to pick up something and he said, “ewe jiggly!”

Have you ever noticed how body builders are always tan? It’s to hide the fat! Although they typically seem to have more of an orange glow to them versus a deep dark “ban de soliel” tan. I’m sure they try to pass it off as having something to do with showing muscle definition but I am on to them!

So here’s the quandary: If I tan then I get even more wrinkles, which I am fighting with all products known to man kind, but if I stay chalky white the fat will show up everywhere 10 minutes before I do, introducing itself and asking if someone could please pass the guacamole. When I finally get there I will be greeted with a strobe light session of florescent lights….yikes!

So, I am tanning. I have a trip coming up soon with some girlfriends and want to at least try and hide some of the fat. I wish I could tell you that it really doesn’t matter to me and I know my friends love me no matter how demanding my chalky white fat is about the guacamole. But it does matter to me. I just need to make sure no one bumps into me.

“I forgive you” my daughter says when she has been punished for something naughty she has done. When a favorite toy is taken from her for a “time out”, immediately she tells me she forgives me. Even though this really isn’t they way forgiveness is supposed to work, it stuck in my head and I started thinking about people or situations I needed to forgive and hadn’t.

I am almost positive that the God of the Universe didn’t reserve his forgiveness just for me. Why then do I withhold forgiveness from anyone? One of the worst things about withholding forgiveness isn’t really about what you are denying the person who has offended you; it is what that withholding can do to your own heart.

If you are anything like me, (sorry, but there has to be at least one person out there) holding on to the offense in some situations can become a kind of obsession. Like the care and devotion required to grow a bonsai tree. They require just the right amount of water; sun light, temperature and constant pruning. You want to tell others how you have been hurt (another sin by the way); you will play out different scenarios in your head where you get to seize revenge on your offender and cause humiliation for them. Oh, what sweet revenge, right? But what actually happens, is a drift from the One who has forgiven you millions of times over and over again. The offense starts to poison your heart and if left untreated it can become like a cancer consuming all of you. And this could be just one instance!!!! This cancer will invite other cancers to come and take up residence in your heart, like bitterness, resentment, guilt, shame, fear and even hate. If you are not proactive you could end up with a heart that has no room for the love of Christ and seems to be covered in a thick black tar called pride and self righteousness.

Those of you who are different than me, tend to never acknowledge that there was any type of wrong doing in the first place instead you internalize your hurt by not speaking about it at all. You say nothing and act as if nothing has happened and if any emotion regarding the hurt starts to show itself you immediately push it back into a nice little box next to all of the other hurts you are carrying around. Guess what? That doesn’t work either. Sooner or later all of those boxes will start to bulge and rip, until finally they can hold no more and it starts to ooze out the sides, until an explosion happens and you end up spewing all of that pent up hurt, resentment and bitterness on everyone around you. It reminds me of a pair of jeans I once owned. I loved those jeans. I loved them so much that even after I had out grown them I still jammed myself into them, contorting my body into all kinds of strange positions and asking for assistance from girlfriends to get them on, until one day after getting them on they burst! I do mean burst! The button went flying off and the zipper completely ripped out. I felt a very deep sadness that the jeans had finally quit on me but also a very distinct sense of relief. I am pretty sure that was my spleen and a few other internal organs sensing the release in pressure.

We are human and forgiveness isn’t going to come naturally for most of us but God has commanded us to forgive and more than that he has also commanded us to go to the person who has offended us. This is not always an easy thing to do especially if the person who has hurt you is not a Christian. If that is the case, you are not off the hook, seek wise counsel from your pastor or a Christian mentor and make plan, realize that the person may not hear you and accept your forgiveness. The most important thing is that you truly forgive and move on.

Please don’t mistake forgiveness with forgetting. There are some hurts that still require you to forgive but not to forget what has happened. We still need to protect our selves from situations that could put us or others in danger.

I am committed to becoming more like my daughter and immediately asking for and giving forgiveness, to keeping the cancers out of my heart, realizing when the jeans don’t fit anymore and living the life God has planned for me!

Living as a Christian doesn’t always get you a lot of glory. In fact, doing the right thing whatever that may be, rarely leads to praise or accolades from peers. It is what we are supposed to do. Live right. Love each other. Have a humble heart. Love Christ.

Honestly, I struggle with this some days. To make myself humble and put someone else’s desires before mine does not come naturally to me. Holding my tongue when I feel I have been wronged is even more of a challenge. And when I do what is right it doesn’t always feel as good as when I let off a little steam and tell someone exactly how I feel.

It is my hearts desire to live as Christ would have me live but it is a discipline. Not only do I need to continually remind myself of how I need to handle certain situations but some of my best meaning friends can keep me from living this way just by feeding my ego and telling me what I want to hear. I want to hear that I am right and if I think I have been treated unfairly, I want someone to agree with me! But a friend in Christ isn’t always going to massage my ego. They are going to continually challenge me to live better and keep me on the path that Christ would have me on. I am so blessed to have friends like this. I want to be a friend like this.

Recently, a group of my girlfriends and I were talking and the subject of meekness came up. Meek, not a pretty word. Short and simple but when I picture someone I considered to be meek, it is not a person who stands tall and strong, quite the contrary. In Rick Warren’s online daily devotional he described meekness this way,

“The ability to control our reactions, to handle hurt without retaliating is called meekness. Jesus promised, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5 NIV). Meek people control their reactions toward life and this gives them far more control over a situation than if they simply react.

If you are a meek person, you are no longer a victim. You control your choices. The best definition of meekness in the Bible is Proverbs 16:32: “. . . It is better to win control over yourself than over whole cities” (TEV).

WOW!!! Not what I had pictured at all! Brace yourselves, I want to be meek!! That is something I never thought I would write, but it is true! I want the desire to always be right, gone. I want to live a life where I am in complete control of my actions and reactions. What freedom in that. No more being the victim.

Jesus desires us to live this way. He breaks the chains that bind. If we open ourselves to His teachings and the plan He has for our lives, one day we will stand before Him in all of His Glory and will hear Him say, “Well done my good and kind servant.”

Truly that is all the praise I need.

If you would like to read more about meekness or Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life daily devotional click here.

When I was in second and third grade at recess one of the favorite things for me and my girlfriends to do was those hand clap game things!!! Sorry for not knowing the exact terminology for them but if you did them then you know what I am talking about. We had two lines we would form on the blacktop, partnering up with each other for a total of about 10 girls! We would sit and do all kinds of different hand clap things through out the whole recess. We would try and see who could do a certain one the fastest, who had learned a new one and or who had come up with clever word changes for them. I still know the words to a lot of them. Want me to prove it? Okay…..

“Down, down baby, down by the roller coaster
Sweet, sweet baby, oh how I love you so
Poor sweet mamas sick in bed
This is what the doctor said
She’ll be out in a week or two
Nobody knows but me and you
Shimmy, Shimmy Cocoa Puffs
Shimmy, Shimmy pow wow
Shimmy, Shimmy Cocoa Puffs
Shimmy, Shimmy pow wow”

Impressed? Don’t be. The thing is going to be going through my brain for the next couple of days now!!!!

I have stayed in touch with most of those girls that sat on that black top and every single one of us has had very real, deep, heartbreak in our adult lives. My group of girls have experienced, teenage pregnancy, rape, abortion, infertility, affairs, divorce, depression, suicide of a family member, death of a child, physical abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, addiction to pornography, and bankruptcy to name a few. I don’t think any us have been or were prepared for the difficulties of life. It’s not something someone can teach you about it is something we experience. Thankfully we have experienced it together.

The best part about experiencing these types of things together is the sisterhood that is born within them. We all love each other and some have stayed closer at different times in their lives but we have never strayed from our common bond of sisterhood.

Recently, I was talking with one of my “adopted” sisters here in Rockford and she was expressing her awe in the amount of love and compassion coming from our girlfriends. She has never had a lot of close girlfriends and was amazed at the out pouring of love she had received. I said, “It’s what we do. That’s what girlfriends are for!”

God has never promised us that life is going to be easy, in fact, he tells us that their will be trouble, difficulties and heartbreak. I believe that one of the earthly ways he helps us cope with these troubles is the gift of girlfriends.

I can’t imagine my life without them. I know that God uses them to speak to me when I am not listening and to be his arms when I need a hug. He uses us to teach to each other through our experiences and time and again I have been amazed by how he provides just the right person at just the right time!!! Thank You Lord!

One of my very special girlfriends texted me last week with the scripture below and said “Let’s do trouble together!” I’m in…Bring it!!!!

John 16:33 (New International Version)
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

For me sometimes it is the simple things that can really make my week, day, morning, ok , help me get out of bed!  Here is a list of just a few:

A fresh pot of coffee in the morning, that I didn’t make

10 minutes in a bathroom, ALONE…ok, 5 minutes…3….

Everyone at the dinner table

Everyone at the dinner table, happy

Everyone at the dinner table, happy, with a meal prepared by someone else!!! Yes!!!(wait, this probably means I just had a baby or I have a broken bone somewhere….)

The soft cooing a baby makes as it nurses or drinks from a bottle

A shoulder to cry on and a big hug

Being the shoulder to cry on or giving the big hug

Secret chocolate stash

Laughter

Laughing so hard my stomach hurts, I am crying and crossing my legs!!

Watching my boys toss a ball back and forth (no words, just being together)

Listening to my daughter take care of her dolls, and tell them about Jesus

Girlfriends

Sisters

Fall and the smell of burning leaves

Being able to sleep diagonal across the bed, just because I can

Little feet coming across the bedroom floor and finding me in the middle of the night to snuggle

Unsolicited I love you, or thanks mom

Socks in the hamper

Knowing that it has nothing to do with who I am or what I have done that gets me to heaven!!!!!

John 3:16 (The Message)

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.”

When I stop and really think of all of the women in my life and how blessed I am because I have them in my life, I am humbled.

My husband and I have lived in seven different states over the last 18 years.  We have met some of the most amazing people and made lifelong friendships along the way.  I also have two incredible biological sisters, two extraordinary sister-in-laws, a wonderful mom and a loving mother-in-law.  God has provided exactly what, who, when and where at just the right time…imagine that!

These women have encouraged me, humbled me, taught me, held me, prayed for me, cried for me and with me, laughed at me and with me, but most of all loved me!!  And I have been told, that is not always an easy thing to do!!!  It would be foolish if I didn’t mention the fact, that besides my family, my girlfriends have given me the most material to write about!!!  Thank you ladies!!

The bond between sisters biological or chosen never ceases to amaze me!  I cant wait to continue on our journey together.  It may not always be easy going but together with Christ as our guide, I know it will be life changing!!!