In 30 years

The other day I was flipping through the channels and came across a show that caught my attention. It was one of those news shows like 48 Hours or 60 minutes. They were doing a story on the friendships of women. In this particular story they were talking about how much women value their friends and often fight harder for these relationships than they do their own marriages. This struck me as odd, but it was also reassuring at the same time.

You see, I have the BEST friends in the world. I know most women would say that about their friends, but I can honestly say, none are better than mine. I have SuperMom, my best bud of all time whom I have been friends with for 30+ years. I have my best “single girlfriend” who lives in Arizona that keeps me sane through all of her voice mails, texts messages and emails.

And then I have my core group of friends that I cherish more than anything. Some of us have been friends longer than others but as a core group we have all been friends for about 8 years. I value these women more than life itself. I would do anything for them and they would do anything for me. Between us we have 22 kids.

A few years ago we went to New York for a long weekend to celebrate the 40th birthday’s of some of the girls and we thought we were so cool when we told people that we had 21 kids (at the time) between the 7 of us…the waitress at Crackle Barrel, however, didn’t think it was so cool. I don’t think the boys in the bars would have thought we were that cool either, so we chose not to share that particular statistic with many people.

I look forward to any day that I get to see any of my friends. Because we are all so busy with our kids and jobs it is sometimes tough to make time for each other. But we try our darndest to get together at least once a month.

My favorite gathering is always our Cookie Exchange in December. We come together to celebrate our friendship, our lives, and the meaning of the season. Each year I get a little teary eyed as I look back at all of the events in our lives that we have celebrated, cherished, laughed at and cried over. We have been there for each other through our marriages, children, divorce, sick parents, vacations, deaths, 40th birthdays, illnesses, triumphs, disappointments and challenges. Everything that friends go through, we go through together.

The best part of our friendship is when I think about being friends with these women for another 30+ years. My heart is overflowing with emotion at that thought.

These girls are my angels.

My heart.

They are my home...my rock.

I feel so very lucky to be surrounded by such amazing friends. After all, it’s not every day that you surround yourself with the type of friends that would march over to your ex-husbands house with billy clubs prepared to rip his toe nails out one by one if asked.

"Friendship isn't a big thing, it's a million different little things." -Author Unknown