Day 8- Friends

We ate lunch with the married children of some of our dearest friends from Oregon.

It is impossible for me to believe that we only lived in Oregon for two years and that I was in the hospital or on bed rest for most of the last year. These boys were away at college or on missions, and yet they still feel like my beloved nephews.  

What a great time of life!  They are both newlywed and still trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up.

Can I tell you something?  Mormons absolutely have this marriage thing right!!

Because we believe in a Law of Chastity which means we have no sexual relations with another person unless we are legally and lawfully married, and because we believe that marriage and "family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children."  We marry young and we have short engagements.

This may sound judgemental, but I feel like LDS weddings are REAL beginnings. 

LDS weddings are what marriages used to be.  Two people starting out life together.  Because they have nothing, their weddings are simple and beautiful.  They really NEED wedding gifts.  They are two virgins who use their honeymoon to get to know each other.  

LDS weddings are in stark contrast to the Reality TV images of "Say Yes to the Dress" and "Bridezilla".  They are not a worldly show of money and glamour.  They are beautiful.  

There is SUCH beauty in starting out life together.  Marriage as a beginning is so much more than marriage as a seal-the-deal after we've lived together for five years.  

Isn't it hard to believe that we are now the old advice givers?

I love college-age kids!

This is a picture of me with my dearest friend, Taneil.  We were together in BYU married student housing and we have talked almost weekly over the past 16 years.  My oldest was born a day before her second child, and we also had our last babies (my eighth and her seventh) just one day apart.  (Even though she was originally due three months before me.)

We are so very different and so similar!  Our souls are melded.  I love this lady!  I love her children.  I love her husband.  I'm SO grateful for her touch in my life.

For years we talked every Tuesday while we have cleaned our homes.  (Somehow her clean has always been more effective than mine!)  Those conversations are holy spaces in my life.

I love that our children are becoming good friends and I'm still trying to get her to send her kids out to my mini-farm for a visit.

We spent the night at their home and it was lovely.  She is lovely.  Friendship is lovely.

We both have had really large struggles in our lives. Our journey has had ups and downs.  It still does.  But, oh there is joy in walking through life with someone.

I'm grateful I was married young.

I love the journey we have taken together.

I'm grateful for friends!!  

Life is good!! 

Friends make life good.