The beauty of friendship. TRUE friendship.

The older I become the more appreciative I am of the true girlfriends that fill my life.

While I'm not old, I've certainly lived long enough to recognize the futility that comes hand-in-hand with senseless competitiveness and desperate struggles to be everything you think your friend (or neighbor or sister or cousin, or even a perfect stranger) is.

As I cruise through mid-life I am thankful for the great group of women who surround me. They praise my strengths and tolerate my idiosyncrasies. They cry with me and laugh with me. They know I'm not perfect and yet they're okay with that. My secrets, hopes, and dreams are buried in the vaults that are their hearts. My name is safe on their lips. Time nor miles can separate true friendship.

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that  they can grow separately without growing apart." - Elizabeth Foley

It hasn't always been this way and - because of that - I am so thankful for this stage in life. It takes a while to see the world and our place in it with clarity. It takes even longer to understand that no one can fill our exact place, just as we cannot even begin to fill someone else's. We are unique, God's Originals.

The reality is that we, as women, tend to wear veneers, whether thick or thin, that shield our vulnerabilities and present only the "pretty" side of ourselves. The side we want others to see. The side WE choose, not necessarily the portrait of the woman God created us to be. Some years ago I became very aware that most women are not so much unlike...me. We come in all shapes, all sizes, all makes and models, but the essentials are very familiar.

We need to be loved, appreciated, respected...all of these, for sure. But what we need more than anything is TO love. To love without boundaries, without limits, without expectations. To truly love is the greatest gift and women are abundantly endowed with it. We are nurturers by nature and, yet, so often we fail to nurture and support one another.

We are a sisterhood and our strongest ally is most likely standing right by our side. But she may be too shy, too opinionated, too angry, or too - goofy even - to approach. Even so, I have a feeling that her heart beats much the same as mine does. I'm quite sure that her arms shelter someone much as my own do, and that her eyes drip tears of joy and sadness and pain...exactly as my eyes do.

"In everyone's life, at some point, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." - Albert Schweitzer 

She has hurts and disappointments. Pride and shame. Strengths and weaknesses. Irritating habits and endearing characteristics. She is my sister. My friend. My neighbor. The fellow teacher that I pass in the hallways each day. She is the young girl that sits in my English class and she is the elderly woman that I see weekly at church.

I may not always know her name.

But I pray I always see her.

She's not all that different from me.

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot often arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been created to do. After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house." The old woman smiled, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them. For two years I have been able to put beautiful flowers on my table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace my home."

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.

For all my cracked-pot friends (AND for me) - whether I know your name, just recognize you by sight, or quite possibly have not even met you yet - here's to remembering to smell flowers on OUR side of the path!