Friends

I have been doing alot of thinking about the friends in my life and how some relationships just seem to slip out our lives. I don't know if it's just me, but finding someone that is on the same plane as you in many areas is so hard! I have had friends that have been fun to be around, but there was always something that put them into the "okay" friend column. I find with most friends and even some relationships with certain family, they never ask about you. They can ramble on about themselves and never once say, oh how are you? Maybe they lack the same kind of friend I wish I had more of.

My very best friend is Sarah. I used to work with her downstate at the lab, and we haven't seen each other in about five years. She inspired me to be a stay home mom and to not get stuck in a rut of working at a job just because it's comfortable. We had talked one day at work and she said something about how she didn't want to look back on her life and regret working at the same job, kids grown, and wish that she had been there for her kids more. She didn't even have any kids at the time. That conversation changed my life. I'm not saying it was easy to go down to one income or to adjust to the stereotype of the stay home mom that working mothers have. I have another "friend" who has been downright rude to me because she was jealous that I was able to stay home with my kids. And yet, anyone could make that sacrifice for their children, but this friend has that "self-centered disease" that I wrote about a paragraph earlier. How is it that some people can be so oblivious of the world, their children, and their friends? It's like that dumb country song, "Wanna talk about me". I have to laugh when I hear that song. I know so many people like that!

So back to Sarah. She quit the lab a short time after me, moved to Indiana for a while, and then moved with her new husband to Laramie, Wyoming. They literally moved out there with the minimum, lived in a tent for a couple of weeks in the dusty dry heat and looked for a home and jobs. Her husband was going to the University there for his graduate degree so Sarah worked to support them for about four years I think. Well, now they have moved to Battle Creek, MI and just had their second child, another boy and she is also a stay home mom. She quit her job in Laramie when she had her first son and is also living her dream. She was raised in a Christian home, went to a very conservative Christian Reformed University in Grand Rapids and was put into my life in a time when I wasn't even walking with God. It's amazing that we became such great friends considering our differences at the time. I know that God had a plan when he put us in the same place and made our friendship. Hopefully we'll get to visit soon!