This has been hard to post…

I recently went on a once in a lifetime vacation overseas and the day after returning was re-adjusting to the times zone and cooking, and dealing with family drama, when a friend kept calling me.

After she called the 3rd time (I had been on the phone with my baby sister which is rare enough) I said I should probably check to see what she was calling for. It was bad news, not a surprise given the number of times she’d called. But the news was anything but expected. Anything but …normal problems. She told me that our friend had been killed in a car accident.

I was devastated.

Heart broken.

Stunned.

Angry.

It was the other drivers fault. I guess I’m still a bit angry about it but, the other driver died on impact. So it doesn’t do much good to be angry….

Over the next days, weeks…I, we (all of her friends and family) tried to adjust to doing life,…without our dear cheerful, kind, encouraging, sweet friend.

I did not want to talk about the vacation for over a month.

She had come over after ice storm 2023 to get the kids together to play and asked to help me with farm chores. She helped me spread sheep poop in our food garden. She gave me some ideas for fixing a falling chicken run and I was so glad to have gotten to get to know her better.

We had known each other for 2 or 3 years but this was our first time just hanging out together, not with others. I was so blessed by her faith and her spirit and I was looking forward to raising our 4 yr olds together, farming together, homeschooling together and becoming old together. I just knew we were going to be great friends for a long time.

You see I have a hard time making friends. I have hard time finding my people and when I do, it is something really special to me. I like people who can go deep and aren’t superficial. She was one of those people. It just..takes a while to get to know people well enough, to know if they’re…my kind of people.

I miss her. But when I went to her memorial service I got to meet all of *her* people. And I met more people who felt that way about her. She was that kind of person to allot of people. She made her people feel special, normal, cared for. I/ we will never know how it would have been to have her here for the rest of our lives. There will always be an emptiness that only she could fill. But from knowing her, and learning more about her from her *other people, I am inspired and encouraged and convicted to be that kind of person too.

Her oldest daughter re-wrote and sang a song about her mother at the service that truly made me feel that she was carrying my heart upon the wordsn the tune, the melody and her beautiful voice. But truly it was my friend carrying my heart. My friend that gave that beautiful girl life and inspired her to sing it.

It is a pain that will never go away to have lost her. But I want it to make me a better person, as I know, if she were still here, she would be helping me be. Just by being her.

Maybe I can try each day to be enough of a blessing to others that, if my life were cut short, my love and kindness would carry thier hearts through to the end.

Ultimately my Savior will carry my heart to the end, but He does send us special friends along the way to sojourn with us and build us up to help us grow and be better people for it. She was one of them.