Friend: Five Minute Friday

It's fun that this week's prompt is "friend", because instead of FMF standing for "Five Minute Friday", it could just as easily be "Friend Making Friday".
The regular contributors that comment on your post after reading it can become your friends as you pour out your hearts in such a short time. You realize so many "me too" moments, that you feel accepted and surrounded in love and understanding!

And what better reason to meet with some of these friends in real life this summer? Sign up for the retreat! :)


Okay. Prompt is "friend". Go!

"A friend is a friend to the very end."

I memorized that statement in the third grade to help me remember my spelling choice that the "I" truly did belong before the "E". :) Fri-end.

How difficult it was for me, however, to make friends. I felt that I was always friendly, even though I was shy and self-aware. I constantly tried to follow patterns and rules to make sense of the world.
It worked so well for me in Mathematics and English, that I couldn't understand why it began to change in about the 5th grade. I hadn't changed and the boys in my class were still the same, but the girls were different.
All of a sudden, there was a sense of being left out. I see this tying into last week's post on "Abandon" already!
I had a steady friend, though. Her name was Susanna. Suzy for short.
I always remembered her phone number and birthday.
From 3-8th grades, we were friends. I was just another brown-eyed, brown-haired girl in her house (all her siblings matched me save one). She was 3rd in line with two older brothers, a sister just after, and then four more brothers.

My 5th Grade birthday Party. Suzy is on the Far left with glasses. I am on the far right with glasses and pink pants.

Suzy was steadfast. She didn't have highs and lows like so many of the others. She was a thermostat instead of a thermometer. I'm a bit more reactive, myself.

When I contacted her in college, she was home for Christmas and invited me out for the summer. I ended up meeting my husband and a year later, was graduated and married and living in the same town.
She got married three months before me and helped plan my wedding along with hers. We shared many of the decorations and were bridesmaids in each others' weddings. She was my matron of honor!

Suzy's wedding was in June. Note the beautiful periwinkle bridesmaid's dresses? She found 6 for $120 online, and I bought three of them and she bought the other three. We shared many decorations for my September wedding.

My wedding day and Suzy (in the matching bridesmaid dress) as my matron of honor! :)

Two years after I had my youngest daughter, she had her first. My youngest's middle name is Susanna in honor of this dear woman.
She's meek, gentle, humble, and a very hard worker! She made her own business and transferred slowly from employed to self-employed.

Me trying to get Naomi Susanna (my third daughter) out of my belly on Susanna's horse. :) Two years later, Suzy had her own daughter!

God sometimes gifts us with friends that we don't get to spend time with often, but when we do spend time, we pick up right where we left off. Suzy is one of those friends. One of my greatest joys was surprising her on her 30th birthday with a group party at Applebee's. She thought it would just be the two of us. :) Holding her daughter at the hospital was another. I felt like an aunt!

I hope and pray that my daughters will have a steady friend like Suzy. We met in 1989 and I am so blessed that almost 30 years later, we have ended up in the same town and our daughters know each other!


-Tammy