Mr. or Mrs. Friend

My best-known identity is that of friend.

     I am a wife to one, David. I am a daughter of two, my dad and mom. I am a mother to two, Russell and Sheryle. I am a sibling to three, a sister and two brothers. I am grandmother to five. However, I am a friend to many.

           If you are like me, your best-known identity is that of friend. As we do life, we have a limited number of relationships that come about because of the relatives God presents to us. As we know, blood kin can produce some of our closest friends.

           Throughout lifespans, we encounter others who become friends, rising to significant numbers. I imagine we all have yet to meet some friends we will dearly treasure. Turn a metaphorical corner in life, and boom, we meet different people, and encounter probable new friends.

           Enemies don’t form friendships, or people with opposite opinions don’t think alike, so they prefer not to spend time with each other. Friendships occur among those who have something in common. A number of avenues bring us to friendships: church, politics, sports, hobbies, support groups, medical problems, kinship ties, careers, armed services, schools, social clubs, service organizations, neighborhoods, or providential meetings.

           Sometimes it takes very little in common to make a friendly alliance. Sydney Smith said, “Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.”

           I’ve found that friendships, which have grown from mutual agape love, have helped to keep me sane through some of life’s darkest moments. Friendships enrich our lives. The characteristics of healthy friendships are many, here are just a few: humor, reliability, accountability, sharing, kindness, listening, and respect.

           At a conference this week, I watched a short video about poverty, where the narrator asked people what they thought poverty meant. They answered lack of food, lack of money, lack of shelter, and transportation.

           Then he asked another question to those same middle class citizens, if you lost all today and had absolutely no resources, how long would it take you to find food, shelter, and employment? Most answered that they could find food in a couple of hours, shelter within 24 hours, and work within a week’s time. Why? They said they could depend on friends to help them.

           I got it. I understood that for the desperate who have nothing a friend is the most valuable thing in life. In addition, for those who have everything – same answer. Friends are our most valuable asset in any economic situation.

           Some friends come into our lives and stay until we draw our last breath. Others are not so permanent. We can think of friends who only had relationship with us for a while. For many reasons, they were short term. Perhaps they came into our lives for a reason, for us to help them or them to help us. Other friends are seasonal friends, such as my dear friend Bev Grayson. I knew her only six years before she left this earth.  

           A fragrant, sugar crusted loaf of friendship bread doesn’t last long in my household, but friendships fueled by the ingredients of heaven endure and have an eternal shelf life. Friendships remain an integral part of our lives because Triune God lives in community and created beings capable of community with him and each other.

           Many scriptures give guidance for friendships, a component of friendships is humility, because it takes a humble person to learn from another and to allow a friend to help.

           This week, when you gather with friends, leave them better than you found them, because “As iron sharpens iron, so one friend sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).

           Hunger for Humility: “If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the
man who falls and has no one to help him up!” (Ecclesiastes 4:10)

          

          

 

Winner Gifts for Friends

The November winner of A Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts is Lois Chapman from Texas. Her copy will be in the mail on Monday. Check out our website
www.christmas-scrapbook.info or the blog at http://scrapbookofchristmasfirsts.blogspot.com. To order ether The Stained Glass Pickup or the Christmas book, contact me writecat@consolidated.net

As usual, send an email to writecat@consolidated.net or leave a comment here to be entered into the December drawing.
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Friends are the best. What do you gift your friends during the holidays? When I was in elementary school, I had five close friends, and we spent our allowances at the five and dime store on Christmas gifts for each other. My allowance was 25 cents a week, upped to 50 cents by the time I was in junior high. I still have a teddy bear given to me by my childhood friend, Sharon.

Now, instead of holiday gifts, we stay in touch, especially for milestone events in each others’ lives. We even had a slumber party one time and that renewal of friendships was much better than exchanging gifts.

After I married and moved to Montgomery County, I met more friends, who lived in my community. One of them is Doris A. She knows all my weird habits and still loves me. I can confide in her and know that my words will not tie on traveling shoes. Doris knows my everyday schedule and looks out for me. She’s made cornbread dressing for our holiday meal when I was in a bind, babysat my children, and shopped for mother of the bride dresses, and we’ve used up a million miles of telephone wire.

She’s given me Christmas gifts throughout the last three decades, but none are more precious than her acts of kindness, sharing recipes, and offering writing critiques. She’s read all my manuscripts, and I didn’t coerce her, she asked! Our friendship is blessed because we know what is going on in each of our lives, and we know how to stand back or step in to help.

If you really want to bless your friends’ lives this season, think of a unique act of charity that you can do for them. I’m reminded of the seashore scene after Jesus’ resurrection (John 21). Beside the surf, he built a fire and had sea catch roasting, and when his weary fishermen friends returned from a long night at the nets, Jesus said, “Come and have breakfast.” The fresh scent of misty dawn, briny air, and roasting fish drew his friends to a breakfast cooked by God’s own hand, as pleasant as the morning sun he caused to rise.

Author Emilie Barnes tells about a time when one of her friends was very blue and needed an outdoor time of refreshing. An indoor meal just wouldn’t do. Sometimes there’s just too many plastic and artificial things indoor.
Emilie prepared a thermos of hot tea and light refreshments and arranged to drive her friend to a nearby park, where they chatted, sipped tea, and tossed cares to the wind.

Several years ago when I contemplated what I could get my friend Doris for the holidays, nothing came to my mind that quite suited her needs. I could have bought her another cookbook or costume jewelry or a pair of those really furry, warm house-socks, for her barefoot habit. But doodads seemed frivolous that year because she’d been caring for a very ill family member.

That particular Christmas she was pressed for time, like no other, while mine remained peaceful that year. Like most families, her husband and sons, Richard, Jason, Lee and Chris, enjoy pies. She usually baked their favorites for the holidays -- caramel, vanilla custard, pumpkin, and cherry. Early that December, I bought aluminum pie plates, and one day I pulled out my best recipe for pie dough and got busy with the rolling pin and pastry mat.

Within an hour, I had unbaked pie crusts in pans, fluted around the edges, and ready to freeze. A few days later, I phoned Doris and told her I was bringing her Christmas present early. To this day, she says the frozen, ready-to-use pie crusts were the best gift so far.

Whether you have money to buy a gift or not, this year, point the gift of labor at a friend’s need, and you’ll come up with a winner-gift and a winning smile from your friend.

Visit Cathy at www.cathymessecar.com

One More Washing

A Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts is now available. They retail for $16.99 and make excellent gifts to families or friends who might not know Jesus. They gently share many facets of his life and workings with people. Hardback, gift edition has full color interior, silver foiled snowflakes on cover, 160 pages, tips to simplify the holidays, stories to warm hearts and encourage families. Learn how to grow myrrh, get 10 scrumptious cookie recipes, meet Grandma “Jeanealogy,” discover why Nova Scotia sends the city of Boston a Christmas tree each year, read about the Nativity hunt and the Santa chair, and much, much more:

To order email me: $17.00 includes, S&H and taxes writecat@consolidated.net
Also leave a comment here or email to have name entered to win the October book give away. Your choice, The Stained Glass Pickup Devotional Book or A Scrapbook of Christmas Firsts ~ Stories to Warm Your Heart and Tips to Simplify Your Holiday


Get other holiday tips at our blog:
http://scrapbookofchristmasfirsts.blogspot.com/
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Years ago, some would say by chance, I met a woman from Michigan, who still blesses my life. While in Navasota, TX at a street sale, one of those where kettle popped corn permeates the air and the sun chases shoppers to the shaded booths, I met Irene.

At the time, I was a vendor, one who made different items from old pillowcases, embroidered furniture scarves, or lace curtains. When Irene saw some of my handiwork, she asked if I needed any more yesteryear pillowcases. Sensing that she had access to some, I said, “I can always use a few more old linens.”

Today, I still enjoy seeing the work of folks from the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, from those who spent hours weaving tiny stitches into both serviceable and beautiful items. Some of their adept needlework became lacy gloves, collars, or booties for babies to wear during the winter. Other sewing projects made by industrious women, and maybe some men, became aprons, bedspreads or tablecloths.

The day we met, Irene and I exchanged addresses and telephone numbers, and we struck up a business relationship. She located and sent me old linens, which I couldn’t resist. Some of the treasures are in my home and some have been gifted to friends. Irene has passed along old tapestry bell pulls, gorgeous hand embellished linen tablecloths, women’s vintage garments, tatted crosses, crocheted doilies, infants’ bonnets, lamp shade covers, and cross stitched Christmas scarves.

But Irene means more to me than the goods she sends. Over the past 15 years, we’ve become friends, exchanging family news, letters, phone calls and even cups of tea and warm cookies when she and her husband, Zolten, visit Texas. Once when I phoned her home, she was teaching her adult son how to make stuffed cabbage. Made me want to parboil cabbage leaves and stuff them for dinner that night, too, especially after getting instructions over the phone.

Again this week, a package arrived from Michigan. I opened it, folding back the layers of white tissue paper and discovered fresh washed linens, with handwritten notes about their history or how Irene had cleaned them. “Soda and Woolite. Good Results.” In one note my friend mentioned that one stack of linen, with more wear, were free, “Bonus. No charge, no way.”

In one note, she also reminisced a bit about those few worn pieces that she’d included, about salvaging those fragile bits which represented hours of toil. She said only her late grandma and Irene would save such tattered beauty, and she quoted an often heard phrase from her grandmother, “Let’s wash it one more time.”

The old ways, more labor intensive, can remind us of industry, and that even worn things can be made usable again. When cleaned up, something good can come from what looks to be useless. Through the prophet Jeremiah folks were encouraged, “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls” (6:16).

I can imagine God wanting us to look back at some of the old stories that point to his forgiveness and his just way of righting wrongs. He longs for us to keep asking for wisdom, to keep asking for more goodness and mercy in our lives. But sometimes I hear another voice, a discouraging one that whispers, “You’ve messed up again.”

But God’s compassion overrides, the discouraging voice. And on the days when I know I need yet another overhaul, more wisdom, more repairs, in my heart I hear God’s tender voice, caring, and merciful saying, “Let’s wash her one more time.”

Who Would Hide Me?

During danger he will keep me safe in his shelter. He will hide me in his Holy Tent, or he will keep me safe on a high mountain. Psalm 27:5 (New Century Version)


In Joseph Heller’s novel, Good as Gold, two men discuss friendship. One recalls the story of a Jewish man, who lived in Germany during his childhood. He and his family escaped the terror of Hitler because of courageous folks who hid them. During the conversation, one man asks the other longtime coworker, “Would you hide me?”

Ask a friend this question and you cut through shallow skin and into heart muscle. While researching for this article, I dialed my longtime friend Doris Allen and told her the story I just wrote for you. I didn’t phone to ask her the question. I called to thank her. I knew the answer.

Heller’s fiction grew out of real, horrific happenings. The Hebrew word “olah” means “burnt sacrifice.” Later, Greek words “holo” (whole) and “caustos” (burned) combined to form holocaust, a term used to describe the systematic murder of Jews by Nazi Germany.

Survivor David Katz wrote about his family and the Holocaust. After being separated from his parents, David, age 13, walked a five month journey to occupied France, mostly by moonlight. In hiding and disguise for several years, he found his first real bed and good night’s rest in the home of a Catholic priest. When the Gestapo prowled, the priest hid David inside an attic wall.

Other Jews left through underground networks. Some were shielded in outhouses, forests, behind false walls, and haylofts. During this time, plenty of folk turned their neighbors in for harboring Jews. Indoctrinated German children even turned in their own parents.

Julian Bilecki, a skinny teenager in Poland, and his family hid up to 23 refugees for several years in an underground bunker. In the winter, members of the rescue family jumped from tree to tree bringing food to the bunker to avoid leaving a trail of footprints in the snow.

Later from the United States, many of the bunker survivors sent gifts to the Bileckis, who remained poor. Eventually, the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous flew Julian Bilecki and his son to the United States to reunite with some of the people the Belecki family had helped.

Mrs. Grau Schnitzer, who was 9 when sheltered, met him at the airport and spoke to him in Russian and Ukranian, “God should be praised for this moment, and thanks for all your goodness.”

Pettiness and possessions pale, moving into the background, when deep inquiries about life surface. What are your answers to these questions?

Who would I hide?

Who would hide me?

You may reach Cathy at www.cathymessecar.com

PS Thanks to Mike Cope (blog and article in Christian Standard) and Darryl Tippens (book: Pilgrim Heart) where I first read the question: Who would hide me?