What Is A Friend?

I am certain that when I was a young girl I thought that friends were playmates. Someone who you could make mud pies with. Someone you could ride your bike with. Someone to eat at the lunch table with. But I learned fairly early that friends could also make life painful. That you could feel isolated and lonely in the world. It took a VERY long time for me to discover what a friend was. To discover what it was I was looking for in a friend. And more importantly, how to BE a friend.

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words." by Donna Roberts

I have struggled through adult friendships in my life where I was fraught with insecurities and lacking confidence and compassion. I had gotten myself to a place where I had, in essence, nothing left to give. As I have worked on developing my faith and my relationship with Heavenly Father I have found a greater capacity for love in my heart. It seems the more I freely love others, without placing unspoken expectations on them, the more love seems to come back and fill my heart.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him, his own."
-Benjamin Disraeli

And so, as an adult, I have re-learned that a friend IS your playmate. A friend IS someone to make mud pies with, to ride bikes with and to sit at the lunch table with. A friend is also a light in darkness, a gem valued above all other riches and someone who knows all your faults, and you theirs, and yet love each other anyway.

"Do not save your loving speeches
For your friends till they are dead;
Do not write them on their tombstones,
Speak them rather now instead.- Anna Cummins


This is my dear friend (my BFF as it were) Carol. We have been friends for over a decade now. She is a confidante, a movie partner (Brian doesn't love the movies so much), a sounding board and an amazing woman of strength, integrity and beauty inside and out. My life is richer because of her. I love you girl!


This is Barbie. Isn't she beautiful too? I am always amazed at how God brought us together. Barbie has lived less than a mile from me for years and yet I never knew her. Until Mandi and Hannah came into our lives. Our daughters are from the same orphanage and province in China and I am daily grateful for this plan of His that brought us together. She inspires me in my duties as a mother and as a woman. I am so thankful for her sense of humor, her kindness and I just genuinely LOVE this woman.



Kathy was our sweetest China blessing (besides Sarah herself) when we travelled to China in Sept. 07. She is an amazing friend and I feel like I have known her all my life. We are working towards a reunion and I can hardly wait.





More friends that have added to the beauty of my life. I put vanity aside for these ones ;-)(lol!) I would rather you get to see and meet these wonderful ladies than to worry that I was having "sumkinda" hair day. What is with all that forehead??? There is such a thing as too much of a good thing(hee hee).





And my bestest friend of all. You're still the one that makes me laugh, warms my heart and is my EVERYTHING. I love you to pieces.


And this is to say nothing of the wonderful women that I have come to know through the internet world of adoption and otherwise. Stef, Amy, Hayley, Heidi, Nicole, Patricia, Erin, Desiree, and on and on(I don't want to forget ANYONE). I so appreciate your friendship and encouragement. Truly I do.

Now, go hug YOUR friends.