A Coffee Buddy

Coffee tastes better with a friend, even if it's powdered Cafe Au Lait or roasted barley coffee substitute. Do you have a coffee buddy or a tea buddy, or maybe a diet coke (heaven forbid) buddy? I've mentioned before that I have moved and moved and moved (if only that applied to my exercise routine)... will we ever stop moving? Yesterday I received just a blip of an email from one of my true heart friends. I haven't lived near her in almost eight years, but I still get sad sometimes that we no longer get to have our coffee together. True, good, crying on your shoulder, sitting comfortably in silence, baring all your sins and shortcomings, honest with you, not afraid to challenge you, friends can be hard to come by, especially if you move every three years! In Alabama I had a true friend. Our kids played together beautifully, and at the end of a long day I would often go over to her house, we would sip our coffee in the kitchen (or her favorite spot, the back porch), and we would unload our woes, and then I could go home refreshed and ready to tackle dinner and not have to unload on sweet hubby.

After we moved from there, I felt her loss immediately. There was no unloading of woes and no friendly commiseration. For many years after, when things were really bad, I would think of her and cry because I missed her. She was also a great spiritual mentor to me and always reminded me to turn back to Him and stop looking at myself. Before moving there, I had left a good friend in North Carolina who's loss was not as keenly felt because of the immediate friendship I had found when moving to Alabama. She too was an end of the day coffee buddy.

After I moved here, I was bemoaning the fact that God had not sent me a mentoring friend (to another friend), and she said, "Maybe it's your turn to be the mentor." Well, I'm still hoping for a mentoring friend, but I'm mulling the whole maybe-it's-my-turn thing over!

At any rate, I was just thinking about how important it is to be in touch with people who have affected our lives and that when we think of them we ought to let them know, because maybe our words today will be just the words of encouragement they need for the day. Shoot them an email or send them a hand-written card (another lost art--the hand-written letter). And if you are remembering all the ways you were blessed by that far-off friend, maybe you can bless someone else in one of those ways today!