friends...

I have known these girls for ....ummmm..let's just say since before we were twenty.  All three of us speechies and all three of us completely different personalities.  We have watched each other through travel, living overseas, coming home again, changing relationships, babies, almost teenagers, job changes and all of life's emotional waves.  But yesterday when we hung out at the beach and prevented out children from being sucked out to sea down the Caloundra passage it was like we were young things again.  The rhythms of the conversation and the giggles.  The gentle questions and the unspoken support.   To find people in your life that stay constant like this is a precious gift.

I remember the first day I met Susy.  My first day at university - fresh faced and completely nerdy (actually that has not changed too much).  I found out she was in the same course as me, and I said - do you want to go to the first lecture together?  She said okay - and we were pretty much joined at the hip for four years.  She has an astonishing gift for making friends in new places, and she is cheery for my soul.  We shared many lollies up the back of lectures, I helped her find the notes and instructions for assignments, and she instructed me in how to get along at uni.

I met Katy not long after, and man does she make me laugh.  She is my scrabble buddy and a perfect introverted fit to mine and Susy's needy extrovertedness.  She is wise and I have watched her grow so much in the last few years.  And through some wonderful quirkiness her daughter and my daughter have become best friends.

And Susy has produced this wonderful child (her other wonderful child was running too fast for me to catch a photo!).

I could just gobble up his sturdy chubbiness.  Susy didn't notice that much when I tried to convince him to be my third child.

I am so grateful for these girls.  And all the other wonderful friends God has dropped into my life.