friends.

"i awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new."

-ralph waldo emerson

as i get older, i am increasingly aware of the blessing of friendship.  from the time i was a little girl, my father instilled in me the importance of being in community with others.  for hundreds of nights as i was growing up, my father would tuck me into bed and sit on it's edge, having a heart to heart with me.  a very much one-sided heart to heart, mind you, but never preachy.  "relationships are what life is all about, megs" he would tell me "they are the most important thing in this world."

i carried those words with me from the time i was a young girl, and they have been some of the greatest tools in molding me and shaping me into who i am and what i value today.  i will always be so thankful for those wise words from my dad.

it's an amazing thing to have friendships in my life that are tried and true.  that have weathered life's storms, that have stood the test of time.  i believe they are truly some of god's greatest gifts.  being the nostalgic gal that i am, nothing thrills me more than to have girls that i've been friends with since i was fifteen, or since i first stepped onto a college campus, or rolled into the big city of dallas, still be by my side.  through each season of life god has blessed me immeasurably with beautiful women to journey with... and who have stuck by me through thick and thin, all these years.  now i get to watch the children of many of my lifelong friends play with and make childhood memories with my girls, and that is just the cherry ontop of my nostalgia sundae. there's something to be said for that song we used to sing in girl scouts as we looped our arms through each others: "make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other's gold."  so very true.

 

this weekend two of my best friends from college came to visit.  we hadn't all been together since my wedding five years ago.  we were pretty pumped.  to say we had fun in college is definitely an understatement.  but not the typical fun you'd expect from college girls.  no.  we went to a conservative christian college in the middle of the cornfields of ohio.  so, we had to get a little creative.  snowball fights in the dorm in the middle of winter, late night trips to ihop with pillows stuffing our shirts pretending we were all pregnant and countless pranks (one of which involved throwing a live lobster in the middle of a group of people who were watching tv in the dark) were just a few.  i know what you're thinking.  we were awesome.  i drove to boston to pick them up and felt like a little kid on christmas eve.  we didn't get home until after two o'clock in the morning, fueled by laughter, chatting and three styrofoam cups of dunkin donuts coffee.  they loved on my girls, we laughed with nick over snacks and good wine, the three of us crowded in my tiny kitchen and cooked a delicious feast that we attempted to eat on our back deck (thanks for nothing, mosquitoes).  saturday we spent the day in the coastal village of bar harbor, store browsing with coffees in hand, walking by the water, pausing leisurely for conversation on a park bench and enjoying a good lunch. it all went by way too fast, but i savored every second of their company.  there's nothing quite like time with girlfriends.

i'm so thankful for all the women that have walked through life with me.  i pray often, even now, for bella and emmy to be surrounded by good girlfriends; some that will just be for a season, but for a handful that will be for a lifetime.