Friends for Life

I’m not exactly sure when and how it all started for everyone else, but for me it was my 7^th grade year. Coming from a small country grade school (where I had only been for two years), the large county-wide junior high in my small town brought a lot more opportunities for friendships. Little did I know at that time that some of these new friends would turn out to be friends for life!

On Saturday our group of friends spent the afternoon together as we do annually every spring and ate lunch together in one of our homes as we did each day so many years ago in the school cafeteria. We’ve been sharing life with each other for over 50 years now, and we’ve been getting together each year as a group for more than half of that time. Some in the group have known each other even longer.

On paper, it doesn’t make sense. We are an eclectic group representing diverse backgrounds and worldviews. Some have shared beliefs, but not all. We weren’t all raised the exact same way and we didn’t all take the same paths after graduating from high school. There are homemakers, a dentist, an architect, an engineer/interior designer, a nurse, a small business owner, as well as those in management and administrative positions. All are married, most have children, and some have grandchildren. We each have our own circles of influence where we live as well as separate family lives. We wouldn’t necessarily have the opportunity to choose each other as friends if we met today as senior adults.

But we met so many years ago as pre-teens and early teens in classrooms and in shared activities – and something clicked. Most of us had music in common, meeting in band or choir classes and continuing in the community Junior Music Club. Some were on school sports teams together while others joined after-school clubs together. We were all high achievers, and most were in leadership roles in school and participated in service projects together. Simply put, we are still friends today because our history with each other binds us together.

A lot has changed through the years. We have each faced losses and many painful as well as joyful experiences. Our conversations have changed as we have aged. Lately we talk about things like health concerns, Social Security, Medicare, and retirement. We share photos of our changing families and stories of life in our sixties. We now live in four different states, and all of our parents have passed.

Occasionally we are missing one or two at the lunch table (like this year), but they usually return the following year. The journey continues to be worth it because our history unites us. We knew each other “when”, and we know each other now. Friendship is a special gift, and I am grateful to be part of a group of strong and courageous women who have weathered much and who still want to be my friend after all these years. Until next year . . . 

 

Belated Mother's Day Thoughts

My earliest Mother’s Day memories involve flowers – not expensive bouquets or fancy corsages, but something much simpler. The flowers I remember were plain red and white carnations.

A since-abandoned tradition existed in the time of my childhood that my family adhered to every Mother’s Day: people whose mothers were still alive would wear one red carnation, while people whose mothers had passed would wear one white carnation. Living in sunny California, my grandmother had a few beautiful carnation plants in her front flowerbed. I remember going to her place each Mother’s Day before we all went to church together and getting adorned with my fresh and vibrant red flower. As a little girl, I felt so pretty!

I also remember the year that everything changed, and now I understand why. When I was 6½ years old, my grandmother lost her battle with cancer and went to heaven. Three months later on Mother’s Day, there were no carnations. Yes, our free supply was gone; but more importantly, my own Mom had crossed into new territory – and she wasn’t interested in wearing a white flower that publicly marked the loss of her mother. She was only 35 years old at the time.

Mother’s Day in the United States was begun officially by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 in response to a grass-roots effort to honor mothers started by activist Anna M. Jarvis after her own mother’s death in 1905. (Interesting sideline: her mother’s favorite flower was the carnation, and Anna included hundreds of white carnations at a service for her mother in West Virginia in 1907.)

In the mid-1800’s, Anna’s mother Ann Reeves Jarvis (also an activist/reformer) organized Mothers’ Day Work Clubs in West Virginia in an effort to improve living conditions in poor Appalachian homes and lower the high childhood mortality rate. She also organized Mothers’ Friendship Day after the Civil War to promote peace between Union and Confederate families. Julia Ward Howe (best known for composing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”) carried on the peace effort with her Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870 and by organizing a Mother’s Day for Peace to seek the eradication of all wars. Support lasted for about 30 years but died out in the face of the First World War in the early 1900’s.

Mother’s Day in the United States, then, has long been tied to the efforts of women promoting other women or important causes – including Coretta Scott King’s 1968 march for underprivileged women and children and other women’s causes like equal rights and access to childcare in the 1970’s. A disconnect has developed between this service-oriented mentality and the self-seeking Mother’s Day images portrayed today on social media. In our effort to present the best public impressions, we’ve at least partially lost sight of the true role of mothers and caring for others more than ourselves.

Let’s face it: social media can be brutal for those whose families don’t look like the pictures that are posted. I’m not against posting photos of happy families. I often do it myself. But as I thought about my own carnation memory, I decided that I want to be more sensitive to those whose lives don’t match the photos. For Mother’s Day, this means taking time to pray for:

·         those who have lost their Moms – especially recently

·         those who are experiencing infertility

·         those who have suffered a miscarriage

·         foster/adoptive Moms

·         those who have lost children to suicide or other means

·         those whose children are addicts

·         those whose children are wayward or lost

·         those whose children don’t live near them

·         those whose mothers treated them with cruelty

·         those who have difficult relationships with their mothers

·         those whose mothers abandoned them

·         those who were foster children or adopted

You see, as I realized with my own Mother’s Day experience as a young child, not everyone is always having a “Happy Mother’s Day” – and that’s okay. But I want to follow in the footsteps of earlier women who saw beyond themselves and put their efforts toward improving the lives of others. It’s really true that “the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world”; but my influence doesn’t have to stop just because my children are raised. I can still make a difference by how I treat others and by caring more about them than myself. And by praying for them . . . 

Jars of Clay

“Life is hard, and it might not get easier.” This is a line from a worship song we used to sing 30 years ago. The older I get, the more I feel the truth of that line. Yes, there is a lot of joy in my life; and I have been extremely blessed. But this past week has been a reminder of my weaknesses and the frailty of my human body. And as I have been preparing to speak to a group of women for the first time in 5 years, I have found it difficult to focus on what really matters and ignore the physical issues I’ve been facing. How I long for heaven the older I get!

But then, as has so often happened in my life, God’s Word spoke directly to me and into my situation. And since this was precisely the main point I was hoping to convey to the women I was speaking to last night – the power of God’s Word to change us – I don’t think it was a coincidence! “For the word of God is alive and active” (Hebrews 4:12a).

As I was reading the book of 2 Corinthians this weekend, I came across several verses that encouraged me to look beyond my present physical limitations or insufficiencies and to focus on God’s work in me. I don’t want to be physically weak, but my weaknesses are designed by God to make me rely not on myself but on him (2 Corinthians 1:9). As 2 Corinthians 3:5 says, ‘our sufficiency is from God”. And we are described in 2 Corinthians 4:7 as jars of clay – fragile and breakable – “to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us”.

God’s Word always has a way of over-riding my emotions and replacing them with truth. As I limped through this week with less than stellar attitudes about my pain and weaknesses, two other verses from 2 Corinthians adjusted my thinking – which is the beginning of right reactions:

2 Corinthians 4:16 – “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

 

2 Corinthians 5:1 – “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

 

I may be a fragile and broken jar of clay on the outside, but God is working from the inside out to make me more like himself; and I will have a new body in heaven that will never wear out and never be weak again. Praise God that what I can see now is not all that there is! In the meantime, I can rest and take comfort in the truth that God’s power is made perfect in my weaknesses – and that his grace will be all I really need to face whatever lies ahead (2 Corinthians 12:9). And as that old worship song also says: “We believe in God, and we all need Jesus.”