The Loveliness of Friends

The ladies on the right have been having lunch together periodically for something like 9 years. It began when our children were in junior high and high school and competed together on the home school speech and debate team. We would hang out at tournaments and go to dinner on the way home, and so enjoyed each other that we didn't want to stop when our kids were done with high school. So Mary, Kelley, myself, and Vickie, get together 3-4 times a year for lunch: we catch up with one another and each other's children, ask for prayer, rejoice with each other, and just enjoy the comfort of godly friendships. This is such a blessed distraction from the sometimes weariness of this broken world!

Yesterday we were joined for lunch by a couple of the kids (though one is about to be married, and really is not a "kid" anymore...), and after lunch we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie. Talk about distraction.... It was typical Indiana Jones: hokey and ridiculous, terrifying insects and Natives, bad guys and chase scenes... everything one would expect from Indy, along with nods to lots of past movies. It really was fun. And the "adult kid" has a funny review of our experiences on her blog here.

I see the loveliness of Christ in the loveliness of my friends...they bear my burdens with a smile, call or write to check up on me, distract me, serve me, make me laugh, remind me what is good and right and true and noble. What a blessing friendship is in this broken world!

And P.S. Mary so HATES getting her photo taken that short of me having cancer, she could never be persuaded to allow it. Most of my photos of Mary look like this:

This makes the photo of the four of us together that much sweeter... Thank you Mary! See what great friends I have-- going out of their comfort zones for me?!