Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Friends

I'm thinking deep thoughts about friendship this morning. Partly because my copy of Jennifer O'Connell's wonderful anthology, "Everything I Needed To Know About Being A Girl I Learned From Judy Blume" arrived yesterday from Amazon (I'm three essays in and already I want to go out and repurchase the entire collection of Judy Blume's books from my childhood!), and partly because I'll be spending this afternoon shopping for a dress to wear to a good friend's wedding this Saturday night.

You'll meet this friend in my book....he's the one I call Will, although that's not his name (the stunning array of men named "Dave" in my life history forced me to do some creative renaming).

Will became one of my closest friends a few weeks after I wandered into our huge church for the first time, wondering why on earth all these normal-looking people were hanging out in a school gym listening to a talk about Jesus on a sunny Sunday morning. Will, along with my friend Amy, helped me figure out what all this stuff meant, and what it might mean for me. But more importantly, Will prayed for God to send me my husband, which was what I was looking for when I wandered into that church in the first place.

Will prayed for my husband, and I prayed for his wife. Apparently Will's prayers were more powerful (or perhaps he was just more organized about it?) because my wedding day arrived three years (to the week) earlier than his. Who knows, maybe God knew that marriage was a bigger deal to me. I'm not sure I'd have handled the three-year wait as graciously has Will has :)

Anyway, Will's wedding has me thinking about how people come into our lives for a season of time and make a world of difference. And when that season is over, sometimes you fade away from each other a bit. You still care, you still hope for good things and enjoy the chance to cheer each other on, but the intensity dies down a bit once that season is over. And that's okay. So here's to Will, his lovely fiance Joy (perhaps I should call her "Patience" or "Charity" to keep with this renaming thing?), and the God who brings people together and surprises us with how things turn out.

And to think, just yesterday I was posting about the divine origins of baloney :)

Enough with the deep thoughts...I'm off to the mall to find a dress!

5 comments:

Patti said...

you are blessed to have will, and he to have you. have fun finding the dress.

Stacy said...

Congrats to Will/Dave and Joy!

As a very random note, my sister will have her three-year wedding anniversary this summer too.

Beth said...

That is such a great story. It just proves how powerful prayer is. Congrats to Will and Joy!

I hope you find the perfect dress. Shopping for dresses sounds like a perfect afternoon to me. Although, if it were me, I'd probably be tempted to go the whole nine yards and look for shoes, too!

j said...

I'm always amazed by God's hand in my friendships. Somehow I always have the right people in my life at the right time and those friendships seem to fade at the right time as well (though I may not necessarily want them to).

Have fun shopping!

LEstes65 said...

You, my dear and talented Lord & Taylor Lady, will always be someone very important in my life. When I walked into that same church, ready to bolt when all the freakish coffee/bagel people started going nuts, you got up and testified about that whole God brought me a hubby thing. And my eyes rolled. And I thought eye-rolling thoughts about you. And God said, "Guess what. That's your new best friend." Good thing God knows what he's doing!