November 1, 2016-  Yesterday, I learned how to update my BLOG and author page and today, how to post and "pre-schedule" so I am utilizing that new skill to prepare my Christmas gift to you all!  Today, being the first day of the "Thankful Season," I thank God for each of you in my life! Therefore, I am reposting the following:

 My cup runneth over. The bills may not all be paid and all the most pertinent life's questions may not be answered yet, but still, I am blessed. Today, I spent an unchecked amount of time on the phone with a close childhood friend. She is one of a handful, which thanks to Facebook, I am so very grateful to have re-connected with. Then, the mail came and I received a perky card from another of that handful just to let me know I was loved and being thought of. Close friends are easily counted on fingers. Good friends, add the toes, then there are the life long friends who are in more than one category. And those who have seen us through rough seasons, rejoiced with us in plentiful harvests...again, the friends Category Hop about.

     There are the friends who began as just friendly or perhaps not so friendly and through getting to know one another, have grown closer. There are the friends we have not met yet or those we meet every day. Friendship has no boundaries of time or space or geography. Friendship is merely the action of love being shown and sometimes reciprocated. Friendship is our opportunity to get outside ourselves. Lifting one another up, helping one another through each day is the goal.  "Life with all its experience is just our chance of learning love. Love is the daily lesson and we are meant to master this lesson," to loosely paraphrase J.R. Miller.

     I am overwhelmingly grateful for the friends who have passed through my life, walk with me through my life and come and go like the tides. They are all precious and I cherish each and every one of them. I am thankful for the encouragement and reinforcement they offer just as I need it. I am thankful for the laughter and tears, joys and fears, which we share as we commiserate over life. I am thankful that even when we cannot visit physically or speak on the phone or correspond through mail or text messaging, I know that somewhere out there in this big world they are there and my life is better just for having them in it.

     "What a friend we have in Jesus" is a favorite old hymn which speaks of the needless time we spend worrying or fretting instead of carrying our burdens to HIM...so often, HE shows up in a physical friend. He shows up in that ear which listens and that hug we need. He shows up in that silly joke or short quote which sparks a giggle or lightens our step. He shows up in that smile out of nowhere. He shows up in a phone call or a perky little card sent via snail mail.

He is truly the best friend we shall ever have and He meets our every need. He begins this task with our earthly friends. To have only one whom I could truly call my friend, would make me rich and that I have more than one makes me rich beyond measure. My cup runneth over.

"Someday, many years from now

 we'll sit beside the fire's glow

Exchanging tales about our past

and laughing as the memories flow

And when that distant day arrives

I know it will be understood

That friendship is the key to life

And we were friends and it was good."

Key to Life by Sherry Schmidt