Finding Contentment

Friendship: A gift from God

11:31 AM, Tuesday, November 27, 2007 .. Posted in Family .. 3 comments .. Link

This past weekend as I strove to count my blessings and discover what I was really thankful for, these verses came to mind.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up.

But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.”

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

Even though the verses refer to “friends” they have sort of become our family theme over the past year. Each family member is considered a friend, and each good friend is considered family – and what would we in this world of conflict and strife do without our friends and family to pick us up when we fall?

Saturday morning we (my husband, myself, our three kids and our two dogs) drove an hour and a half to the home of our dear friends Nancy and Ronnie. Nancy and I cooked a big Thanksgiving dinner, watched a couple of shows on the Home and Garden Network together, walked the dogs together and dealt with kids’ tears and arguments together.

I had an absolutely wonderful time. Why? These were all things that I could have done by myself at home. I think “together” is the key word here. I love Nancy like a sister, and before she moved a couple of months ago we did everything together.

My husband, Mark, and Nancy’s husband, Ronnie, are also great friends. They spent most of the day riding a go-kart around a track Ronnie had graded around their property. They also spent time playing video games and watching movies. I could see the little boys inside these two grown men as they “played” the day away.

Nancy and Ronnie’s son and my son are best friends, and my teenage daughter (like most girls her age), loves to play with and care for Nancy’s baby.

But all this aside, there is something about Nancy and Ronnie that has drawn my family to them. They are good people, as we say here in the south. Nancy offers unconditional love (and chocolate ice cream) whenever I am having a bad day. Ronnie offers friendship and “man talk” during fishing trips whenever Mark needs time away from the kids.

Nancy and Ronnie are unlike our other friends in that we don’t need to spend money or go somewhere with them to have a good time. I can’t count how many times we have all hung around at home eating, drinking coffee, watching television or simply talking about our days.

Like the verses from Ecclesiastes, we have a good return for our work when we do things together. We help each other up when we fall, we keep each other warm, and we defend each other.

I believe that Nancy and Ronnie and their family have been a gift given to us from God. Why? Because for three or four years Mark and I were “backsliders.” We still believed in God, but we didn’t practice what we preached. I had a ton of “friends” – people who were always willing to go out for drinks or to a party. The funny thing was that when Mark and I saw the error of our ways and turned back to Christ (who welcomed us back with open arms, by the way), all these “friends” decided we were “weird” and had turned into freaks.

This was a two or three years ago, and after some lonely days with only our family and our God to depend upon, God threw Nancy and I together. Although Nancy and I had known each other for years, we hadn’t had enough in common to become good friends. But God made sure that changed, and through our friendship, our husbands and children became great friends.

And so, this Thanksgiving weekend I counted Nancy and Ronnie among the many blessings that God has given my family.

“A friend loveth at all times…” Proverbs 17:17