My Pal Dani

My friend Dani came for a visit last weekend.  It was a direct answer to prayer from a couple months ago when I was feeling rather lonely and wishing I had a BFF (Best Friend Forever) here in Skagit County.  I told God I was sad I didn’t have any good friends to visit with and the next day, out of the blue, I got a call from my dear friend, who lives in California, telling me she was coming up for a visit in February. Being able to look forward to her visit has gotten me through these dark and somewhat isolated winter months, so it was perfect timing.  I so wish she lived closer.

Because I’ve moved around so much in my life, all my really good girlfriends live somewhere else, with the nearest ones at least an hour away.  Sometimes I just want to go have coffee with someone or have the kind of friend nearby I can talk to about nothing at all or tell them about some awesome thing my kid did.  I need the kind of friend that will just be happy for me and not feel threatened by my relentless bragging about Kaleb.

I used to call Dani up when I was feeling like my life was in the toilet, because no matter how bad I had it, she always seemed to have it worse.  She’s been through a lot in the thirty years of our friendship.

We both agree there’s absolutely nothing either one of us could ever say that would make the other mad.  Unconditional love is the foundation of our friendship.  It’s good to have a friend that doesn’t require me thinking before I speak, because I do a lot of that, and in the process, I seem to upset people with my words -  but Dani knows my heart and knows I never mean any harm and would never take offense.

We met at my first job out of college – I was her supervisor, but she was clearly smarter than me, she just lacked any formal education.  It took her years, but she worked full-time, raised her two boys (and a husband), had foster children and still managed to get her B.A. and finally her Masters degree.  She’s now a school psychologist, which is a job perfect for her giftings.

Whenever I’ve needed a “time-out,” I fly down to California and spend the weekend with her.  It’s like going home.  It was her turn for a time-out this weekend.  While she was here she told Kaleb that he “saved her life.”  He didn’t know what she meant until she explained that another time she flew up here to see me was right after he was born.  The week before she was to come, she felt a lump in her throat and thought she was coming down with something because her lymph node was swollen.  She was worried about bringing any kind of sickness into our home with a newborn baby, so she actually went to the doctor, which she wouldn’t have done otherwise.  As it turned out, she had cancer, which would have gone undetected for much longer, had she not come up here to meet him.  He was impressed. 

I so enjoyed just sitting for hours and doing nothing but yacking with My Dani.  She didn’t want me to plan a single thing while she was here because all we needed was uninterrupted time to talk.  Does it get any better than that?  And that’s pretty much all we did.  She’s a very wise woman who has a perspective on situations that I admire.  She’s able to see things from every angle and deals with life’s traumas with incredible grace.   Her children and husband adore her and she’s the rock that holds her extended family together.  I couldn’t deal with some of the things she’s experienced, yet you’d never know she’d been through any of them because she just carries on, looking better than ever, and always smiling.  Whatta woman.  I am blessed to call her my friend.