yet another friend,,,,,

so while erika is beaching it up......she trusted me to write on her blog. ok maybe not so much trusted as just gave in to my begging. whatever the reasoning i am pleased with the outcome.
this week marks a pinnacle moment in our relationship. you see i am not a forever friend of erika. i don't remember her in braces. i never rocked out to rem with her when they were cool ( although they never stopped being cool). i wasn't even a member of her fashion forward wedding party. i regretfully never even got to be prego with her. nope. nada. none of it.
you see we met at church. boring right? stop yawning and just hear me out. you see i approached her. i am sure you expect me to say i probably approached her because of her adorable family, her gorgeous smile...nope. she had cute hair. that's it. she had adorable hollywood chic hair and i wanted to selfishly know where she got it cut. that is how shallow our relationship started.
that was almost five years ago. and things never looked the same.
i am doing a bible study right now " seeking a heart like His" -beth moore ( or as i like to call her bff) and one of the points she makes is ..."maybe you are not where you want to be but you are not where you used to be".
and wow i am so not where i used to be. you see five years ago this is where i was...
*new church( hated being there)
*left church i loved ( all my support was there)
*prego with fourth child( big fat whale and depression that was going to swallow me)
*fulltime job ( added more stress than one human should ever have to have)
* new house ( ok . new to us. but built over 100 years ago and that is always fun)
* no sense of community( lonely. so sad. and did i mention lonely?)
*begging my husband to switch jobs ( i am a michigan girl....love the beach...)
and now its five long years later...
* new church...is home. love everything about it. couldn't imagine my life without it. and i met erika there....
*not prego ( thank you Jesus...but we are adopting two more kiddos from east africa...call me crazy...that makes six. yep six little mouths to feed, love, hold, kiss.....
*working at home. writing. ( and loving every minute of it)
* community? i have the most amazing. loving. changing the world because of Jesus kind of friends. i have been to africa with them. served the hurting and the poor with them. i have a group of women in my life that i adore and love more every day...
*husband at same job ( and its ok. its really ok. God wants us here)

so although i am not where i want to be (africa- that's a whole other story) i am not where i used to be. and although i still struggle with the loneliness and my kids not all being in the same country right now. i know that i will not be where i am now five years from now. and i thank Jesus every day for that.
and i thank Him for the adorable girl that came into my life five years ago....
and anyday that she's like to come back from the beach....
http://shelimassieblogspot.com