To kick off my Give Thanks trend, I'd like to dedicate today to my friend Belle. She's been giving thanks each day via Facebook status and her dedication today really warmed my heart. "Today I'm thankful for my bestie Running Fish and our many many trips to El Maguey." Maybe it was because I was super tired this morning, but when I saw that it really made my day.
Today, I'm thankful for the wonderful friend I have in Belle and all the years we've shared together. It's friendships like hers that make life extra special.
Belle and I haven't always been friends, however. Actually, we were quite the opposite of friends in the first years of knowing one another.
Back in the day, Belle and I wound up in the same Junior Girl Scouts troop by process of troop consolidation (i.e. my troop disappeared and my Mom plugged me into a new one). Let's just say we didn't get along too well from the get go, which is putting it mildly. In recent years we've discussed this quite a bit and the consensus is we were both going through our issues and for one reason or another we both identified the other as a threat. Mind you, we were sixth graders at that point. I was the new girl, invading the troop that Belle had been in forever. And she was the "it" girl, the one who all the girls liked and the one who I wanted to be. She was pretty. She was popular. She was everything I felt I wasn't. Like I said, we each had our own issues and that was part of mine. This didn't bode too well for a harmonious relationship. There were a lot of mean words exchanged, an incident where one of us threw play-dough at the other (this was a lot bigger of deal than it sounds, trust me), and just general contention.
By the end of seventh grade, I begged my mother to let me quit Girl Scouts. I was that miserable with Belle. I'm sure she was pretty miserable with me too, in hindsight. I wish I had committed to memory just what my mom said to me to make me stay, but I suspect it had something to do with her mentality that if you commit to something you see it through the end. Whatever it was that convinced me to stick around, I accompanied the troop on a trip to Branson that fall. The trip was a big deal and we'd been saving for a long time for it. The second night found us surprisingly without incident. Belle and I hadn't murdered each other. And we were sleeping in the same tent, to boot. Clearly there was a higher power already at work. That night, after our mothers had told us at least half a dozen times to go to sleep, the four of us girls finally started settling in. We'd been chatting, the usual stuff young girls talk about. There was one of the girls, we discovered, that suffice it to say had some problems. Before we went to sleep, Belle sat up and asked me if I wanted to pray with her about our fellow troop-mate who was having such a hard time.
Now, I've heard my fair share of cliche stories where divine intervention happened through prayer. Trust me, there wasn't any rapturous singing to be heard or heaven opening up or any other supernatural occurrence. We just sat there and prayed. Silently.
After that trip, Belle and I started to realize we actually had a lot in common. I guess the rest is history because today I'm nominating her as someone I'm thankful for. I'm also thankful for her wonderful family. Her parents and sister treat me like another part of their family. I love them.
On that happy note, it's 21 Days to Thanksgiving! Cheers!
Signed,
RF
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