Friendship

This week has been so relaxing and fun. I guess most people who live on a farm would not describe their lives that way. But since the work I did was all optional, I had a great time choosing what I wanted to do and when :-) The best thing about getting to be here with my sister's family all week is that I got to spend enough time here with them that we actually created some memories. I had conversations with my nieces and nephew. We played games and ate meals together. And last night we pushed back the couches and danced all around the living room - the Macarena, Chicken Dance, Electric Slide and the Limbo.

But another great blessing from this week was a visit from my friend Nina. I first met her when we both attended a Bethany Fellows retreat in Dallas in 2005. On the last night of the retreat, we went for a walk around a lake and got hopelessly lost. We eventually found our way back to civilization, but the laughter about the potential headlines our disappearance would cause sealed a friendship. The next retreat, the following spring, was held just weeks after I lost my best friend Kay to breast cancer. I cried a lot at that retreat, and Nina was there to listen and pray with me. The last day of that retreat (in Florida), we went to the ocean. Most of the other Fellows did some sunbathing on the beach, but Nina and I got in the water and rode the waves -jumping into them and letting them carry us toward the beach. We laughed like little school girls, and I began to find healing from my pain.

Since then we have laughed together, cried together and prayed together many times. There was the retreat when she shared with me that she found a really special guy and her concern that she might never have kids. The only retreat I attended without her was the one that happened right after her brother's sudden death. Soon after that, she married her really special guy (and then discovered a while later that she was pregnant). Since she missed the retreat, she decided instead to come spend some time in Kansas City with me. We again spent time praying together, crying together and doing lots of laughing. My son Rob told me that he can always tell when I'm talking to Nina because we laugh like "freshman girls." That time with Nina was so special because we did a mini-retreat, then a road trip to Laura Ingalls Wilder's home in Mansfield, MO. As we sat eating dinner at Lambert's Cafe in Springfield, getting rolls thrown at us, I mentioned to Nina that Branson was just down the road. My west coast friend looked at me, and in all sincerity asked, "What's Branson?" That did it. After dinner we drove down to the Branson strip and spent the night in the Hillbilly Hotel.

When I heard from Nina last summer that she and Glenn had accepted a position at a church in Canton, IL, I knew she would be about an hour away from my sister's house. So we arranged for her to come spend a night here with me this week and have some time together. I had just seen her family at General Assembly - including her adorable toddler Gabriel - so this was just girl time. Nina loved being on the farm, picking berries and making granola. We went into Galesburg to do some shopping, but first decided to stop into the First Christian Church of Galesburg for a quiet moment - kind of a touchstone of the retreats that brought us together. We had lots of agenda for the day - shopping, lunch, manicures - but as we sat in that cool sanctuary with the stained glass windows and the slighty musty smell, we began to talk about our lives and our ministries. We began to cry a little. And then we prayed. We sat in that sanctuary and blessed the saints in that church and all churches - the ones who make the coffee on Sunday and prepare communion and send cards when people are sick and bring casseroles. It became holy ground, kairos time. We never did get our manicures.