A tribute to a friend.

Pastor Shawn said something this sunday about the importance of words of affirmation. If we gave what we thought someone needed (like criticism) it was like a glass of salt. If we said nothing it was an empty glass. If we gave words of encouragement then it was a glass of water. This was from the book of Ephesians 4:29, "Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them that hear."


I'd like to give some edifying words to one of my friends. This is a tribute to a fellow stay at home mom in the trenches. Here's three different pictures of us at three different times in our lives. As you can see our weight has increased with each child we have. The picture in the middle is of us when we were going to the Christmas Ball. I made the dresses from the Jane Eyre era. Even though we didn't know what we were doing we danced anyway as our husbands looked on in horror! The top picture is of our belly's at my surprise baby shower. I knew something was wrong when I was at the stampin up party on time and Dana had beat me. She almost never does that. The last picture is our last two kids after a roller blading escapade.

We do just a lot of things together. We rollerblade, chat, minister to refugees. We have the same stroller, our mom's sell juice plus, the same style nursing blanket, both drive mini-vans (a sad but inevitable path for moms, something we both swore we'd never do).

I see her changing in amazing ways. I love watching her with her kids. They are like second children to me too as I've seen them since they day they were each born. We have so much fun together too. She laughs at what I say...a lot. We share funny stories and we've both had major meltdowns in front of each other. There are things we've told each other that only we would think was great news!

I'm glad the Lord brought us together. I definitely see His hand in what we've both been through. I'm so glad to see her grow as a friend, sister in Christ, and mother to her young ones. Way to go momma!