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It’s been busy for everyone. I know. I KNOW. I still have to comment on it because I didn’t earn these adult stripes so I could sit back and not complain about things having been better in my day and the swift passage of time. Here’s a bit of what we’ve been up to since the last time I posted.

1. 

   

   Punkin carving! Thanks to some good friends, we carved the punkins and had a grand time doing it. However, I must say that I truly hate punkin guts. Like a lot.

2. Of course, punkin carving means Halloween was right around the corner and we had a scary group of vampires and one (Teen Wolf-looking, though not inspired) werewolf.
3. Halloween was quickly followed by All Saints Day at the kids’ school. Being Eastern, we celebrate All Saints on the first Sunday after Pentecost, complete with costumes and prizes. But, the kids go to a Catholic school, so they have All Saints on November 1 as well. My hippy was looking pretty episcopal if I do say so myself.
   

   

   

    

4. My best friend turned 40, so we had a bash for her. It was so fun to see people from all of her circles. We had dinner at a pub followed by swing dancing at a studio that we rented out. We arranged for some dancers to teach an initial lesson/refresher to get everyone into the…wait for it…SWING of things. It was a ton of fun.
5. Reflecting on my friend growing older (I long ago decided to just remain 29 forever), I was struck by the love that surrounds me. I have often reflected that God’s major way of “intervention” in human affairs is through love. As I remember the night I met my dear friend, I see nothing but miraculous intervention. So, allow me a momentary detour down memory lane…
6. I really met my friend one night at a young adults group (just a few years ago, because I’m 29, remember?). I’d actually been introduced to her at a Theology on Tap several weeks prior and I remembered her because she’s from the town I was born in. We were two twenty-somethings (29 still seemed like a far ways off…it still does), newly married, and I was expecting my first baby. I was so tired and just wanted to go to bed. She was so enthusiastic and wanting to talk and talk. My husband is like that, so there I was, stuck outside after the doors had been locked for the night, standing under a street lamp, listening to the most enthusiastic Texan I’d met in a while, and wondering when, for the love of God, I was going to get to go home.
7. To say that I hit it off with her right away would be a lie. She became a friend of necessity on both sides. She’d left the workforce when she and her husband moved to our town because they were planning to start a family. I had just moved back after a year in Maryland and was expecting to start my career as a SAHM with my first baby. We had no other unemployed friends. We hung out with each other because there wasn’t anyone else. But we grew to love each other as people do when they have no choice but to rely on each other. She saw me through that baby’s death. I was with her when she gave birth the first time. She and her husband came to my house following the ultrasound that confirmed the death of their first son. We’ve attended the funerals of each others children, vacationed together, fought through sleep deprivation together, been angry at our husbands together, learned to love and accept our husbands, seen lean times and times of plenty, been swept along on this breathless adventure together where we ended up in states of life that we did not previously anticipate, laughed, cried, and lived. This is love. We couldn’t have known what we were choosing so many few (cuz 29! forever!) years ago when we chose to accept the gift of friendship the Lord so generously offered to us. We couldn’t have known how generous the offer was. But I can truly say that my life, my soul, has been profoundly changed because of it and that is no small miracle.