Good and Perfect: My wish for my daughter

I am a super emotional person. It’s who I am. My parents kind of laughed at me when I was growing up because of how sensitive I was about things. I cried as a third-grader when I got second place in the Spelling Bee because I didn't beat the sixth grader. I always cried about all the things. So yeah, it's who I am, and WHATEVER. If you know me, really at all, them you've seen me cry. The last week has been full of emotions for me. Some of them have to do with winter weather keeping me stuck inside which is sure to send anyone with four kids into a certain realm of crazy, and some might have to do with me having too much or too little caffeine on any given day, but most of them have to do with some big milestone things I have been processing through this week.

Do you have those people in your life that every time that you are with them your heart is full? Because I do have those people, and those people are absolutely why I am who I am today.

When I was 17 I had a real life-changing moment, an “aha” of sorts, where there was just enough wisdom in my teenage brain to understand that I couldn’t be who I wanted to be unless I surrounded myself with people who could help me be that. Up to that point in my life, any prayers I had prayed were pretty generic and selfish, “thank you for today, help me not get sick, help me to remember all of the answers on the test (or possibly supernaturally change them after I finish so that I get an A anyway if this is an okay thing to ask You), help me fall asleep, etc.” But in the summer of 1998 I had just graduated from high school and I started praying for friendships in college that would be authentic and encouraging. I needed people that could help me along because one thing I was aware of was that I had a lot of room to grow.

More than 16 years later, I can say that God answered that prayer in a way that was greater than anything I was wishing for at that time. And now, it’s one of the most frequent things that I pray for my daughter.

These are my college girls. I could write a book about these people. In fact, there is a journal that has been circulating amongst us for almost 10 years (actually, it is two journals now) and I think it would make a fantastic book or movie series. We each get it, write a little about where we are, and mail it on to the next person. In college, we spent our weekends and evenings together, after college we emailed all of the time, the past two years have had a lot more texting, and now we are super-tech savvy and do most of our communicating via the GroupMe app (if you have groups you text with – download this! It’s so fun!), but there is something about flipping through pages of handwritten stories that is just different. It’s so fun to be able to have all the highs and lows and stupid decisions cataloged that way.

These are my soul friends, the girls who call you out when you’re wrong, encourage you when you’re down, and cry with you when you’re sad. We’ve attended showers, weddings, and funerals together. We have laughed and laughed and laughed. We have cried and cried. We have told way-too-many-details about every subject under the sun (some of us are worse about that than others – I’m fist-bumping you, Jill). We go on vacations together and talk so much that our husbands sit back and stare in disbelief that we never run out of things to say. We carry each other through the hard times and rejoice in the good ones. And now, in 2015, we all join together in one big 20+ hour text chat as we coach our friend through labor and give all of the advice that she doesn’t want (I’m being serious here).

After college we went our separate ways as life has a way of doing, but God in his goodness led Josh and I to a church that would turn out to give us a richness of local relationships that we really needed. It started when we were serving in student ministry with a lot of other people, grew a lot through community groups, and exploded when a friend decided to start a little playgroup with some other mamas in the church. Four of us would get together and chat while our babies stared at each other. A few months in a couple of other mamas joined our group, and now there are 23 children amongst that group of 6 mamas. There is something about raising babies together that bonds you.

Life change happens through relationship. We were meant for community and we all grow and change and mature as a result of interactions and conversations that we have with others. It's not the only opportunity for growth, but in my life, it has been a hugely important one.

So this week when my friend Sabrina had her first baby, it was very emotional for me. Some of that was due to the coaching through labor part, but a lot of it had to do with me reflecting on the life the two of us have lived together. Sabrina was one of my very first friends in college and she and I have experienced so many ups and downs over the years. She was one of the first people at the hospital after Adri was born and one of the first people at the hospital after her brain tumor diagnosis. Her camera is the only reason I have any proof of my children’s existence on the walls of my home. We worked together after college for a couple of years and I vividly remember as we hugged tight and cried one afternoon in the warehouse over some devastating things that were going on in her world at the time. We lived together and we were in each other's weddings and she has been a heart friend since I commented on her Spartanburg Vikings shorts outside of Lever Hall. So on Wednesday when I entered the same hospital that I twice passed out in because of stress from my own daughter’s health, I was just overwhelmed by emotion and the gratefulness I had to be able to come back to that same place and hug on a baby and celebrate with my special friend and her new baby girl.

Then I walked through the food court and couldn’t help but think of my friend Amanda, who for the first two years of the 3-6 month MRIs that we had to have for Adri, would get a sitter to watch her kids so that she could come sit with me in that food court while I fought back tears and fears as I waited, just so that I didn’t have to be alone. Every time. She was just there.

And I thought about this picture… one of my very favorite pictures ever… of these little girls that came to see Adri at the hospital once she got the clear to leave the children’s floor. All of these same little girls were at my house on Saturday celebrating her 8^th birthday. Their mothers are the reason I survived that experience. Truly. They packed my house and organized the movers and brought me meals and sat in my living room on many late nights as I cried about joy and bitterness and fear. They gently rebuked me but always allowed room for me to feel. I’ll never forget when three of them drove me back to the hospital after taking me out to a late night meal when my sweet and wise friend Emily told me that right then they could see that I had a whole lot of support and that my emotions were kind of numb, but that eventually the crowds would be gone and my emotions would be real and she wanted me to know that then is when I would really need them and that’s when they would still be there. And it was true. It’s still true. My friend Ashley and I send texts and shed tears each year on the date when we remember how scary it was that she had to call 911 for us when our daughter was seizing and unresponsive.

Life isn’t meant to be lived on an island. And I want Adri to have giggles and fun memories and funny chats and all of that. But I also want her to have friendships of depth, those people that she rejoices with in such a way that brings tears to her eyes because their happiness is truly as good as her own. I pray that she has the girls that she thinks of when she literally walks through halls that stir up memories of the most painful scary moments in her life – but that the memories of those people still make her smile.

On Saturday we had a house full of giggly little girls. It was messy and chaotic, but she loved every minute of it, and when the madness ended I just couldn’t help but think about the gift of girlfriends and how much I want to foster that idea for her. She is abundantly blessed to have school friends, dance friends, church friends, family friends, friends of our friends, neighborhood friends… and I don’t want her to take that for granted for one minute. Friendship is a sweet, wonderful, and beautiful thing. Different friends have different roles and each is to be treasured and appreciated. I sat at a table with Adri and her friend the other night and made loom bracelets and painted fingernails while we chatted about things their mamas are not good at and their favorite cafeteria lunches. I giggled with them but told them that this, these giggles and pointless chats and fun memories are a gift that is much greater than any birthday present.

I remember crying in high school because I would NEVER have friends like that again. And then there was the most dramatic snot-crying episode ever the summer after college when one friend got married and we all parted and moved away. And when I married Josh I had to mourn the loss of Megan, my roommate of five years, my person. I would surely never know friendship that way again. But then I became a mom and made mom friends who I walked through my hardest moments of life with. And then my daughter started school, and my kids got involved in extra-curriculars, and we became foster parents and started connecting with new people in these new areas. I have made some very special heart-friends even in the last couple of years that I hope will be in it forever. I'm learning that you are never too old for new friends.

I’m not just raising one girl right now, I’m raising two. And I hope and pray for both of them that they would experience the richness and blessing of girlfriends, that they would see all the beauty that comes from living life in community, and that they would be better because of it.