lounge room ministries

I love my friends. more and more I just love them.

And today it's just seemed true as I turn over these beautiful ones in my heart just how blessed I am to know true friendship. Because when I have been at my sickest, my lest able to give back in friendship; that has been when I have known how deeply I am loved.

Truly it blows me away to think how the dearest of my friends have drawn nearer to me in my sickness rather than cowering away, turning from my side as they could have, in fact as I may have done if the roles were reversed. Because, who knows what to say to one suffering, to one so utterly undone as I am.

My strength has been stripped away, and all the perceived control, the understood choices I surely have ahead of me...it's all been blown off like those crackly brown leaves under the oaks at the Botanical Gardens. Just drifted away, leaving me with a pretty wrecked body, a scarred self, and a broken heart.

Tears are often quite imminent. 

Probably lots of things are clearer now I'm sick, now I'm not going to get better just probably worse. Does that make it easier to speak words that used to stick in my mouth, make it easier to live with my heart 'on my sleeve' because now what do I have to lose?

I'm such an introvert. Love being a little crab tucked up in my own shell, just ducking out into the light for short intervals before I need to head back into my own space to recharge again.

And it's true that for the last few years I've put that tendency aside a little, or maybe at least learned to live with it better, so that when I do pop my little self out of my shell I don't just seek out the light hearted fun, but also the moments to deeply connect. And for that I'm so glad.

I made a new friend this week. A beautiful, beautiful beauty of a soul wrapped in the sweetest girl. 

And it was one of my most dear friends who let us meet, because she is giving and sharing like that, and maybe she knew how chatting with Miss A (for an entire morning complete with your scummy soul satisfying toasted banana bread Miss K) would water my soul with that life giving connection that only sisters in Jesus can.

And its friends like Miss K and Miss A who ask the hard hard questions, the questions that can only spring from listening to my heart tucked up in the words I spoke out tentatively, the hard questions of how a heart can bounce from loss to loss and still trust in Jesus. The echo of the hope each have found too, and what it looks like from the point of view of different kinds of hard. 

And I Ieft so rich from that morning. Not just a belly of banana bread, but a soul connected in the deepest of ways.

And all in my sweet friends lounge room. Just a room with a few girls chatting. And it still blows me away that what looks simple, like something that is not much, is actually just.so. much.more.

Friends to echo back to me the hard living that's going on is just such a gift. Because who wants to do life alone, and I don't mean the totally isolated alone, but the alone that can come about because it's scary to open up yourself to others, to share transparently, and to truest others to speak into your fears. It's so good to not be alone.

I am more than blessed.