Dear Reader:

For whatever reason I don’t think we really appreciate what a treasure our friends are in our lives until we get older. We just take for granted that our friends will always be there and life continues as normal…until one day when it doesn’t.

What a lesson I have learned the past two months since being placed in a position of dependence…not one I ever imagined being in and not want I strive to repeat. Still…what lessons I have learned from this lengthy experience.

I ask myself several times a day…what in the world would I do without this friend or that friend helping me with this problem or that problem…I would not have had the luxury of staying home and keeping life as normal as possible.

At a certain point we come to  realize that family and friends are synonymous. We consider them all one and the same. As a mother of adult children now…the shift from a mother-child relationship has transferred over to friendship…on an adult level.

I do believe the measure of a good relationship between parent and child is if (as adults) the child and parent become close friends. It means that somehow (through all those crazy hectic years of raising children)…something stuck. Something good. The “children” got enough sunshine and droplets of love to go from seed to bloom.

I know many of you have probably seen some of our ex-President George Herbert Bush’s funeral. One of the main speakers, throughout several events, has been Bush’s closest friend and ally…James Baker. Through thick and thin, for over sixty years, these two men were inseparable in their friendship both personally and professionally.

Yesterday, at one memorial service, Baker quoted a line from the great poet- William Butler Yeats…

“Think where man’s glory must begin and end, and say my glory was I had such friends.”

At Christmas time, especially, friendship becomes a most important treasure that is God-given.

2 Corinthians 8:9

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you, through His poverty, might become rich. 

Hasn’t God “gifted’ us with life…beautiful life and opened up His own never-ending friendship and love throughout it all? He gave us family and friends to surround and support us through our own individual paths.

So until tomorrow…Isn’t friendship the most beautiful Christmas gift of all?

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Sammy, the cardinal, has been returning right outside my window…and even once flew over to my window ledge while I was still typing. Our friendship has certainly ‘run the gamut’  …starting with animosity for him pecking and destroying my side mirror…to watching him help his crippled “wife” get food by shaking the bird feeder so she could eat on the ground since she was unable to hold onto the bird feeder cage. My heart softened and now we are big buddies.

I took this picture yesterday…from my window. Sammy looks like he is posing for me.

And Sammy is remembered inside too with special “ornaments” on the Christmas tree.

When Mandy started putting the greenery on the mantle…a ‘fake’ redbird was caught up in the artificial greenery from last year so she left it…a little red “pop” color to add to the mantle.My brother Ben came to see his granddaughter, Ady, perform in a children’s Little Theater performance last night. We are meeting my niece, Bekah, to grab some supper and then hurrying over to the theater to watch our little actress do her thing! Can hardly wait! ( And I was a good girl and kept my foot up all afternoon preparing for my “foot” performance) * Actually the first row was not occupied so I was able to keek my foot propped  throughout the performance…a God Wink!