Sunday, September 11, 2011

Blogging Contest Entry - I am not a finalist but I win anyway!

The contest was to write about your "Unlikely Friendship".



She was on my husband’s volleyball team. A stay-at-home mom with two toddlers. I was working, miles from my family, and very lonely. We had one thing in common, a love for Scrabble.

We started playing weekly on my days off when her girls were napping. As we talked over our favorite board game we found we had more differences than similarities. We began to laugh more, be lonely less, and though we were very different in personality and taste, we started to like each other.

She beat me every game for months. I kept coming back. It was good to have someone to talk to, even if her life was vastly different than mine. Early in our conversations we found out we were California girls relocated to Idaho by our husbands. We reminisced about our childhoods and talked about how different life is in Idaho.

As the years went by, her girls grew up and she had two more babies while I was struggling with the pain of infertility. She included me as much as I could handle and listened lovingly to my agony over wanting my own.

We joked that someday, our lives would switch. I would be the stay-at-home mom, neck deep in toddlers, longing for adult conversation and she would be the busy career girl running off to work each day.

We did exactly that. Fifteen years after we met, I had three little ones under five, and she was a busy career woman with a college degree.

Eighteen years later, our unlikely friendship is best friendship. We lean on each others differences for balance and stability. We count on the “opposite” perspective, grateful for the years we spent figuring out how to be completely different and completely friends.

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Who am I?

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I have been married to my best friend for over 29 years and our children are 16, 15 and 12 years old. I have struggled with infertility, suffered the loss of a baby by miscarriage, and endured multiple career paths. I have experienced a crisis of faith that shook me to the core and lost dear friends to tragic death. I have a personal relationship with Jesus which is essential to surviving and even thriving in my circumstances. I hope you will be blessed by my heart and words. Thank you for being here..