Well, I'm trying to coordinate my blogs!

It's getting a little easier. Now I've got to interject working on my book and having it ready to go to the publisher by March 31, 2010. If I get slack, give me a wake up call. I do most of my work at night when the other 6 people in this house are sleeping. I'm truly a night owl.

I worked as a nurse on the night shift for over 20 years and my biological clock has never reset. Remember me in your prayers. Satan doesn't want this book published. Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world! Victory! I love ya all!

Work on Friendship? Really!

Why would one have to work on a friendship?  Does finding lifetime friends come easily?  What about keeping friendships intact?  Is it much like keeping your marriage through thick and thin?

I can count on one hand the number of lifetime friends I've had.  Each of them came along at milestones of my life and they are still in contact with me except for one who passed away a few years ago from a stroke.  When I did some research on quotes, synonyms, antonyms, and definitions, I was interested in the word impact in relationship to friendships.  I was surprised to find that impact in friendships is a "forceful coming together of 2 things such as people forming a friendship together."  

The impact is compared to a glass shattering on a tile floor, a bashing together, clobbering, pummeling, taking a licking, clashing, crashing into each other, colliding into one another, and hitting with force.  What do these terms have in common?  They are forceful and intense.  When you think of your best friends,are the relationships you have and love best also forceful, having power to influence and bring about results one on the other?  Has a best friend jarred, jolted or shocked you?  Was the impact with power and punch?  Was it a meeting and agreement of feelings and senses?

From the Encarta (MSN) website the dictionary says friendship is a relationship between friends having mutual feelings of trust and affection with mutual assistance, approval, and support.  When you think of your closest friends do you both value honesty, integrity, forgiveness, harmony and peace and one another's uniqueness?

Friends: To Have, To Hold

Do you remember your very first friend? I was in first grade. Babs was her nickname for Barbra. We only saw each other at school but she gave me reason to look forward to school each morning. We liked to jump rope, play hopscotch, and swing. Then the hoolahoop came out & we had a new first love. What was it about Babs that attracted me to her? I believe it was the things we had in common.

We also loved to read. Learning to read was an adventure and we read everyday from See Spot Run. I can hear us taking turns in our reading groups. We learned to sound out the words. Ya' know--phonics! We shared our lunch and swapped fruit or cookies. But there was no sharing of my pears. I love a fresh, ripe pear and sharing was difficult. After first grade making friends became my job. Dad had trouble with alcohol and rage as well as my Mom with rage, physical, and emotional abuse when she couldn't control Dad. I moved every school year to a different county in South Florida and two times I changed schools in the middle of the school year. I went to 13 schools in 12 school years. I had no trouble making friends. It came to me easy. Then the trouble came when I grew six and three-quarters inches in the summer between sixth and seventh grade. I started eighth grade at 5'10" weighing 160 pounds. I was hoping I had done all my growing but not quite. I continued to grow taller and when I completed twelfth grade I was 6'1" and 170 pounds. What does my growing so tall have to do with friendship?

I knew that those with whom I made friends from ninth grade until my senior year were lifetime friends. They didn't pick at me with name calling because of my size except in fun. I have had many nicknames like Jolly Green Giant, Alligator Wrestler, and Minibod! Because I had the ability to adapt to change and other difficulties, and my friend making was what I was good at, school became my escape. It was the place where I was the happiest and I excelled at school knowing the whippings would come if my grades fell below a 'B.'

In 1966, I was in the ninth grade and met my lifetime friend. Her name is Mary Lou Anderson Mullis and we have been friends for forty-three years. We spend vacation time together, talk on the phone regularly, and we have a girlfriend journal we pass back and forth. She lives in Florida and I in Georgia. We had the best time from 1966 until I got married and moved away. Then she got married and I had my first child. Our lives were very different but we never stopped loving one another.