God's gracious gifts to women: Each other

My friend M called the other day out of the blue.

She is one of those life time friends of mine. I have several...you know the ones. They dont live near you but you are still connected to them with the invisible bonds of shared past experiences, of memories and of similar beliefs. These are people who are not in your daily lives, but when you talk or have the good fortune to see eachother its like nothing is different. its like you quit mid sentance and just picked it up right there to finish it off. There is no competition with these friends. Its just easy.

M. and I had our babies about the same time. We knew each other previously, but when we were both home, we became very close simply because of the shared experience of having children the same age. She had a boy and I had a girl, which made it interesting, although at that time of life, the boy girl thing is fairly irrelevant. Babies are babies.

Many women find the child raising years to be lonely and at times it is very lonely. You are the only one up in the middle of the night. You are home for extended periods of time without adult company. Youre exhausted. You cant necessarily just take up and leave due to breast feeding etc. It can be isolating, which is why I beleive many women connect deeply during this time. Its an intense shared experience. S. used to say to me many times, "Somehow knowing that you are up, across town, at this ungodly hour, watching infomercials...somehow makes it better"

I had the good blessing of having a neighborhood playgroup and also friends like S. who were a great support system.

M. was a blessing to me in so many ways, because while she did not have trouble getting pregnant, she had trouble staying pregant. I on the other hand was jumping through every hoop possible to try to become pregnant. While our situations were different, they were similar and smacked of loss and saddness and frustartration and anger. One of the most comforting things that came of that friendship was the ability to simply BE...no strings attached. There were not "you should" or "you need to" or "why dont you..." It was the glory in feeling another woman's sorrow. Knowing that it would abate one day...knowing that the sadness would not last forever. Somehow there is so much healing in the honesty of that. Of the friends that dont try to fix it.

While we are not part of one another's days anymore, the comforts of our converstations, of our shared faith are so encouraging. God blesses us so much with each other.