Thank you for all the friendships that you have brought me throughout my life. Thank you for making me part of a big family with siblings who I consider friends. God you have been so loving to give me friends that care about me, love me and invest in our relationships. I am overwhelemed by your love displayed in all these relationships. Today I wanted to especially thank you for one friendship that is very dear to my heart, and ask that you would show the same mercy to my daughter in bringing her a friend and sister like my best-friend, Julie.
For as long as I can remember there has been a Julie. We met when we were babies and played together since before pre-school. I don't remember life without her.
I pray that Rebekah too would have a best friend at a young age.
Julie and I only spent one year in school together, pre-school at Redeemer, and I ended up dropping out after the fall semester because I missed my Mommy too much. In kindergarten Julie went to afternoon Kindergarten and I went to morning K. We spent the rest of our schooling NEVER going to the same school, and yet she was still my number one pal.
I pray that Rebekah would have a friendship that surpasses distance or space.
Through out schooling we would have other friends in each grade that would come along and be our "best friends" and Julie and I would be jealous of those friends. This taught me what scripture means when it say's "God is a jealous God." You aren't jealous of our possessions but you are jealous in a loving and innocent way, wanting to be honored above all other things. Not that I am God but I know that, that emotion, is what you feel. It was innocent for a second grader to want the title of "best friend" - to be recognized, it wasn't that we didn't want one another to have other friends - it is that we viewed the other one in such high regard, we wanted to be loved as much as we loved.
I pray that Rebekah would share this friend even when it is hard, but it is a good lesson to learn.
Julie was raised Catholic and I was raised protestant. Our churches were different and yet from a young age we talked about Jesus and God, and sometimes I would go to mass with her family and she would go to church with my family even if it meant feeling a little out of place. I remember praying with her family, going to her first holy communion and she would come to youth group with me.
Please bring my daughter a friend who knows you, loves you and is sweet and kind.
I pray that this friend would be lifelong friend, because I know how important friendships are in shaping a person in who they are and who they will be. I pray that you would bring someone that knows her and cares for her, who reminds her who she is, in those years of peer-pressure. Someone she can be herself around. Someone who will let her have a bad day. Someone she can fight with like a sister, and learn how to forgive and reconcile (even if it was a fight over a boy). A pray Rebekah would have a friend in her life who throughout growing up "gets her".
I know as her mother I won't always have the best words to say, and that she will need someone she can call, someone who can "talk her down of the ledge" and point her back to YOU, Jesus, because she won't want to hear that from me. There will be times even her husband won't know what to say, because he is a man, and women need friends and each other, but this friend will know what to say. This friend will not judge her for saying EXACTLY what is on her mind - this friend will be able to read between the lines, see through her extreme moods and love her with the unconditional love that reflects Jesus' love.
I pray that you would show this mercy to my daughter, and I thank you for showing this mercy to me. It is truly by your grace that I have a friend like this. Someone who is my "soul sister", and I am so grateful, and I realize this is from you God. It is nothing short of a miracle, because friendships like this are RARE. I don't know anyone else who has a friendship like this, and so I know it is from you. Thank you for hearing my prayer and I pray a special blessing over this little girl who will become a friend to my little girl and who will be like another daughter to me. I pray for her parents and their marriage, and I pray for her wherever she is right now and I wait in anticipation to see this story unfold.
Amen.
Me & my best pal Beaners.
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