I’m enjoying my last hours of alone time, on my own grown up girl time, while my girl has been away at a weekend youth retreat.  I’ve heard from her off and on.  She’s having a rich and wonderful time.  It makes my heart happy.  I love that she has other adults who are pouring into her, coming alongside her.  I love that she’s listening.

But this morning, I sit with my wet hair drying into curls and decide that while the kitten is away, the Mama cat will visit a friends’ church and see what God looks like there.  I love to walk into a body of His kids that I don’t know and take the pulse.  It reminds me that I am not the center of the universe and, in fact, that God is not limited to the doors of one church, one set of people, one way of doing things.  He is a wonderful stew of sights and sounds and people and life pounding in our veins.

I drink my coffee and listen to the birds outside.  I can’t stress enough to you how much I love that sound.  So I will not try.  Just know I love birds and how they sing.  I look out my kitchen window and see two deer curled up content in my back yard.  I love that they feel safe enough to lay down.  I consider a picture but decide to keep the memory in my mind and not disturb them.

  I spent time this weekend with a woman who lives right round the corner from me but life had choked us busy and we’d lost touch.  “I always wanted to get to know you better,” she said “but I didn’t want to push.”  PUSH, I told her.  Sometimes we need that, sometimes I need that as it would not occur to me that someone other than me felt like that.  We sat four hours talking all things life, big and small.  Her son is severely autistic and I listen to her tell me what it feels like to have others see him as a disease.  I take in how selfless her choice to bring her mother in to live with her family, already full to the brim with a pilot husband and three grandchildren that she takes care of on a regular basis.  “I’m sorry if I talk too much.  Sometimes people ask how you are and they don’t really want to hear your story.”  I do, I tell her.  I do.

She tells me about her best friend who died and how she can picture us three sitting together in that restaurant, how she missed her.  “You’re like her in a lot of ways.”  And I get chills. I knew they’d known one another.  I did not know they were close.  It’s her boy at my school that I’ve come to love.  It’s the second time I’ve felt like I’m following in her footsteps. It makes sense to me more now.  The conversation feels appointed.  “Keep praying, keep loving.  I’ll show you how,”  I hear whispered in my spirit.

She dropped me off in front of my house.  “So, it’s okay to call sometimes, to just show up?  Jan and I used to do that.  But some people don’t like that.”  Yes, friend.  Yes.  Just call.  Just show up.  It’s okay.  That’s what life and friends are for.