Girlfriends

I love my girlfriends! I am so grateful that over the last several years I’ve learned how important having girlfriends is. I think before I had kids I didn’t understand the importance of having other women to talk to, spend time with, and help me feel validated and loved. But wow – how grateful I am to have some amazing women in my life!

Tonight I felt that a little extra. A group of my friends here in Texas get together once a week to watch a silly tv show. (The Bachelorette or The Bachelor – whatever is going on at the time). It’s a group of women that changes from week to week but we all enjoy getting together. We’ve all mentioned at one point or another that while we find the show mildly entertaining; the main reason we like getting together is to spend time with the other girls.

So tonight as we were getting ready to get together a group of us were driving together. We were picking everyone up and heading to a fun gal’s house and we realized that we were right down the road from another one of our friends. Someone mentioned that we should go kidnap her and make her come with us – even if she didn’t want to watch the show, we’d “make” her come spend time with us. So 5 of us descended on her doorstep and told her we were there to kidnap her and make her come with us. She started jumping up and down, clapping, squealing and cheering. She was THRILLED that we were there to make sure she came to spend time with us.

As we pulled up to our location we all commented in one way or another how great it was to have a group of girlfriends that got together with each other. Someone said, “I love this! I don’t think I’ve had a group of girlfriends like this since I was in high school!” Someone else said, “This FEELS like high school – kidnapping, giggling – I love it!” All I could do was smile – I love it too! And I love that we make an effort to do things together, have fun and take time for time with “the girls”.

In addition to the friends I have here (who I just love to pieces) I also still miss and love my friends back in Utah. One of my sweet friends from back in Utah text me this afternoon. She was worried about not having someone to watch her kids for something important. It just totally killed me because I couldn’t be there for her. I totally hated being thousands of miles away and not being able to scoop up her kids and help her out. So since that wasn’t an option I started trying to figure out who COULD help out. I found another friend through text to help her and I felt so grateful that I could do that. And then as I prayed and prayed for my sweet friend through the evening so her business meeting would go well my heart turned to her and I was sad that I have to live so far from her! And later in the evening the text she sent back to me made my eyes water with both tears of sadness and happiness, “Thanks so much! Love & miss u so much my heart hurts.” I don’t like that our hearts hurt – but I am grateful that we have friendships that are worth feeling our hearts hurt….

I am so grateful that Heavenly Father knows we need friends. I hope that I can be the kind of friend that others have been to me. I hope and pray that I can be able to lighten their load, make their hearts happy and share a part of myself in a way that we can all grow a little more into the women we’re supposed to become. Thanks girls!