{"id":113,"date":"2012-02-07T13:38:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T13:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kandynolesstevens.com\/?p=113"},"modified":"2012-02-07T13:38:58","modified_gmt":"2012-02-07T13:38:58","slug":"the-value-of-friendships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/?p=113","title":{"rendered":"The Value of Friendships"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Imagine a late summer day, my kitchen is steaming from the canning of tomatoes.\u00a0 The phone rings, and the caller id\u00a0says it is\u00a0my best friend.\u00a0 She is 430 miles away “delivering” her oldest to college in North Dakota.\u00a0 I knew from hello she had something exciting to tell me.\u00a0 “You know those crockpot liner bags that we’ve been dreaming of?\u00a0 Well, I have finally found them. Woo hoo!”\u00a0 Now let me tell you something about that moment.\u00a0 It takes a real friend to know that you are going to get “jump and down excited” over that news.\u00a0 And I did!<\/p>\n

Yet, this friendship like most of my closest friends also has had to endure life’s challenges and hardships.\u00a0 We have weathered the loss of grandparents, parents, and children; job changes, house relocations, illnesses in our children, and everyday hurts and disappointments.\u00a0There are those people who will drop everything to come running when you need help.\u00a0 And she has on more than one occasion. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Incredibly, I AM SO BLESSED because I can make a list of\u00a0 friends of that\u00a0have loved me beyond measure.\u00a0 Friends who appear in the line at your son’s memorial service and tell you that you are going to sit down and eat something – not because you want to but because you need to.\u00a0 Friends who call you because God has laid you on their heart and they don’t know why.\u00a0 Friends who offer to take your kids so that you can have some peace and quiet.\u00a0 Friends who remind you that you cannot do everything, and they hold you accountable.\u00a0 Friends who keep your traditions when you are so exhausted that you cannot. Friends who love you even if you are a maniacal sports mom, and they cheer with you.\u00a0 Friends who call and tell you that you have incredible kids because they caught them in the act of doing something wonderful.\u00a0 Friends who know that you will answer the phone in the middle of the night and who will cry with you.\u00a0 Friends that\u00a0 get your sense of humor and laugh with you in a lightning storm on a football field.\u00a0Friends who share the coveted title of mother on\u00a0her son’s wedding bulletin. \u00a0Friends who live far away but use technology to keep in touch and to encourage you.\u00a0Friends who defend you when others don’t know what you\u00a0are going through. \u00a0Friends who are praying for you, even though you didn’t ask. Friends who remember the little things and send a card, e-mail, or letter.\u00a0 Friends who encourage you to be so much more than you think that you are, but yet who God designed you to be.\u00a0 I have all these friends, and yes, I AM TRULY BLESSED!<\/p>\n

It was a phone call\u00a0recently that prompted me to pause and really think about friendships.\u00a0Her words were like a soothing balm to me.\u00a0 “I just had to call you because you would get it.”<\/em><\/strong> The short version is that through a previous conversation, she was thinking about something she wanted to share with me and some other friends,\u00a0 but\u00a0what she wanted to give us wasn’t readily\u00a0available.\u00a0 \u00a0Then in a series of everyday events, the\u00a0speaker she was thinking about\u00a0was on her radio.\u00a0 She just had to call to\u00a0say that\u00a0God was amazing, and that a\u00a0little flip of a radio channel was the bolstering that she needed to go forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0She was right! I did “get it”.\u00a0\u00a0I shared a similar story of the friend\u00a0where God laid me on her heart and her faithfulness to reach out.\u00a0\u00a0God blessed her with a radio channel, and for me, it was recently a text message.\u00a0With God, there\u00a0are no concidences.\u00a0 The same is true with\u00a0friendships. \u00a0With God, there is no friendship too proud to get excited by crockpot liners, too humble to\u00a0encourage a friend (even if you don’t know the circumstances), too busy to serve in love, too complacent to say thank you, or too blind to love beyond our shortcomings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

God has used \u00a0spiritual spittle – manifested as the tears of my eyes –\u00a0through life’s difficulties to wash away the dust cloud of doubt.\u00a0 He has shown me that He has surrounded me with all sorts of friends to be the living, breathing reminder of the friendship that I share with His son, Jesus.\u00a0 Through each of my friends, I have come closer to Jesus because each embodies a part of Him that I so desperately need.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As an “older” Girl Scout, I keep hearing our old meeting song in my head . . . Make new friends, but keep the old.\u00a0 One is silver and the other gold.\u00a0 <\/em>With all the friendships I have been given by God, I am truly swimming in heavenly gold.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine a late summer day, my kitchen is steaming from the canning of tomatoes.\u00a0 The phone rings, and the caller id\u00a0says it is\u00a0my best friend.\u00a0 She is 430 miles away “delivering” her oldest to college in North Dakota.\u00a0 I knew from hello she had something exciting to tell me.\u00a0 “You know those crockpot liner bags […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[123,185,232,363],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}