This was one of those days that makes my life feel full and good. A dear friend came over with her four children (to make a total of eight children, and yes, it was fun!) to decorate gingerbread houses. That's a wonderful thing, because I'm newish to this area and I enjoy experiencing God's new connections for me and my family. This is one of those pre-planned God-arrangements.
Eight children, globs of white frosting, gingerbread houses, and bowls and bowls of candy with which to decorate and gobble...ah, joy!
That was the flurry of purpose which brought us all together, but the real goodness for me was to sip pear caramel tea and chat with a dear friend, one whom I'm still getting to know, but dear already. This is a friend who asks questions. That makes for conversation which makes me think. These questions and responses are of course passed back and forth between boys running by and shooting dart guns, toddlers needing to be rocked, big girls asking for drinks and candy drooping from gingerbread house roofs, all of which managed with grace and laughter.
As I was chatting with my friend, I was taken back to Texas and another dear friend. That friend, though close to my own age, was years ahead of me in mothering her five children and mentored me as I learned how to mother my then young toddler and baby. It was she who first poured me real tea, paused in her busy, full life and cheered a homesick-for-the-North transplant. She exhorted me: "Bloom where you're planted!" and would announce new ideas for our families to get together with a happy "Let's make a memory!" She was always sunny but also real.
Several years and two relocations later and I'm sitting drinking tea with another sunny and real friend. She brings a brightness to my life and her children warm my own with their friendship. In this new season of my life I find great joy in discovering His connections and His people. They don't have to be manufactured; they are there, only waiting to be revealed in His time and in His way.
I cry out to Him to be that for another, in this season and in all those to come.
