Make New Friends, But Keep the Old

Anyone remember that song from Girl Scouts?  That's where I learned it, anyway.  The second line is, "one is silver and the other's gold."  I always thought it was just a cute kids' song, but I'm learning that it contains much grown-up wisdom.

Becoming a stay-at-home-mom of twin one-year-olds (TOMORROW! The big day!) has forced me to branch out and make some new mommyfriends.  I heard it said recently that someone should give all 18 year-olds a manual teaching them how to make and be friends as an adult.  I concur.  So, I've been getting involved in my MVMOM club as well as RVC's mom's group.  Some ladies who are befriending me (and I them) suggested we have a ladies' night out - woo-hoo! 

Hubby's travel plans changed and it looked like I wasn't going to be able to see them, but the sweeties agreed to gather here while my babes slept upstairs.  Yay!  We chatted about houses, kids, hubbies, and munched on strawberry pie.  I had itunes on for some background noise, and one friend, J, said, "shhh...hear that?  That's (singer SK)"

"How do you know SK?" I asked.  The itunes was playing a Jars of Clay CD on which SK sang background vocals.

"I know her quite well!" she said, and went on to tell me how she spent two years in Rockford, IL, participating in a little-known (in these parts) discipleship training program, where she sang on the worship team with SK and eventually met her husband.

"WHAT?!" I cried!  I could hardly believe my ears.  I ALSO spent two hears doing the same thing (minus singing and meeting future hubs)!  After two wonderful years in Rockford, I moved back to MI to go back to college and finish my teaching degree, while many of my RMC friends were planning their weddings to their RMC boyfriends, much to my chagrin.  This was back in '99, when email was just becoming vogue, and more than a decade before the advent of facebook and (my) blogging, so I lost touch with all but two of them.

Well, it turns out that J and I missed each other by just a couple of months - the people I'd left behind were her friends, too!  My junior high kids (I was a youth leader in the church) were her high school kids, my classmates were her leaders...wow.  We spent an hour catching up on mutual friends' lives, who married whom (and divorced whom) and, I could hardly believe my ears - two of my favorite people MARRIED EACH OTHER!  I dug out the old photo albums, and we really got laughing! 

I had a "God moment" last night with J and our RMC memories.  I know it sounds crazy, but it's one of those areas of my life that I don't talk much about because it's hard to explain why a beautiful (yeah, I was!  Wish I'd have known it then!) young college age girl would go spend two years of her life memorizing scripture, praying, serving others, traveling on missions trips, and NOT dating (not that I didn't want to - when I could have, no one asked!). 

In making new friends, in a small way, I am able to keep the old ones alive.  The time I spent with J last night reminiscing about two years "in the trenches" at RMC affirmed that those two years were well spent for maturing me, teaching me, and pointing me in the right direction to go back home and find my hubs, who'd been living just 11 miles from my house all along.

I'm so glad that I worked up the nerve to branch out, to invite the ladies over, that I made strawberry pie. Just when I think I can't be surprised, God does!