September 20
In Girl Scouts, we used to sing: “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.”
In the last few months, some friends from before Norm have reached out to me. The latest is a mentor from my single days. When I moved to Florida, she accepted me, encouraged me, and challenged me. One day when I faced a major decision, she handed me a slip of paper with just one sentence on it, “Consider your calling.” That paper is still among my important cards and notes I’ve collected over the years.
Now, as I’m facing a future of decisions, again on my own, those words continue to challenge me to consider what I have been called to do and why I am still on earth. Thank you for your faithfulness Dorothy.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be connecting with friends from my past. I’ll get together with friends from elementary and high school, those with whom I ate lunch, had slumber parties, went to ball games, until graduation. Then we went our separate ways, until about 10 years ago, Ann decided to get us all together. What a blessing!
I’ll also see friends with whom I shared those first challenges of motherhood. I still remember Pat and I watching our oldest playing together at about a year old, and saying how far away kindergarten seemed to be, not realizing how fast that time would pass.
I’m also planning to see those friends when I began to develop as a Bible study leader. They were sometimes my guinea pigs for the studies I wrote. We worshipped, prayed and cried together. We faced a number of challenges in those years. They gave wise counsel as my kids hit the teen-age years. I try to do a one on one with a couple of the ladies when I head to NY. I’ll go to the ladies bible study and see more of them, but it’s hard to do a real conversation with a big group.
It’s odd that the connections I have from college are mostly friends I met after college. I say that, because Norm had no friends from his high school, but a good group from college. Again, Deb decided to arrange for them to get together after Covid. The Matterhorn group came to encourage and visit Norm in his struggle. They’ve made sure to make me feel welcome in the group even after Norm’s death.
All through my life, there have been friends who have made me feel seen. Some for a brief time, and others continue through today. I’ve made some new friends since the passing of Norm. I’ve reconnected with others. Facebook can be useful for the reconnection, but it’s only a start.
As Dorothy’s note had said, “Consider your calling.” The calling has expanded from teaching, to writing, and part of that writing is the challenge of writing notes of encouragement to the people who have played a big part in my life. I did send out a Christmas letter last year, wanting to let people know about Norm, but like Facebook, it’s only a start. Some people don’t like Christmas letters, but I do love reading all the things going on in the lives of people I’ve known.
I feel a need to connect, actually I’m feeling a call to be one who encourages and challenges others…those from my past, those in my life now, and those who will be placed in my sphere of influence in the future. It’s not a new call, it arises periodically in my life…I act on it for awhile and then I get distracted from it…sometimes overwhelmed with it…
Where’s the joy?
I am thankful that I am still able to travel and connect with friends from my past. It is fun to remember and laugh together.
I pray for wisdom as I continue to walk the path God has laid out before me.
I rejoice in the God of my salvation, who values that we have good relationships with the people around us.
Where’s the joy? I find it in my friends and in my family.
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:7-12
TRICIA LATHROP 