On Friends and Gratitude

I have an online friend who is famous. Her name is Ann, and she’s my friend because she posts these lovely words and pictures that bring my heart closer to Truth. Blesses me every time! She is my friend in a disinterested way: she just posts it out there and not to me specifically. Disinterestedly because she’s posting whether or not she receives anything from me.

I am not her friend. If we were meeting in a crowd I could pick her out immediately, unfortunately the result of her being famous. But she’d have to have the Holy Spirit pointing me out to her for her to recognize me, a one in a million chance. However, she has upon occasion called me a blessing. The latest was when I bought a bag.

It was in response to her post about helping women freed from slavery, who now make these bags, and although the bag Ann had designed for her birthday through this company sold out (such is the amazing power of my online friend to lead readers to use their money to bless others) within hours, I found and purchased this lovely maple leaf bag. Her post made me weep for the freed slaves, whose situation any of us could have been in, but for the grace of God. We must be thankful for what we have been saved from, even if we haven’t been saved out of it. (Alister Begg)

But I’m giving the bag to Melinda.

Melinda and I would know each other anywhere. When one of us calls (it’s infrequent), the other drops what she’s doing and responds in delight, hoping to hear that we’ll be seeing each other soon. We have been through college together (she a student, I a counsellor at church), grown in faith together, marriage and children, and loss.

I couldn’t have children, or didn’t anyway (unless you count those college kids), for the first 11 years of my marriage. So when I did finally through prayer (it couldn’t have been just, well, you know) get pregnant, I didn’t worry about miscarriage. Actually, the baby wanted to stay in so long we had to have a c-section. I haven’t gotten pregnant since.

But now Melinda is pregnant again!
I am so very glad.

The baby is due in November. Hence, the appropriateness of fall leaves.

And I’m thinking this morning about friends and blessings, about things I’ve been saved from and saved out of and I’m not writing it all down here because some things are other people’s stories but I’m telling it all to my perfect Father in Heaven, and just praising and thanking him.

It is the best way to live a perfect day.