The Blessing of Friendship

 Tonight was our annual Mother's Day dinner with a group of women who have all adopted, mostly from China and Vietnam.  With Tammy and Mike getting their referral last month, I am now the last one in the group still waiting for my referral.  Wow.  We've been getting together for 6 years now, it's hard to believe, and I've watched as everyone in the group has gotten their referrals and travelled to bring home their children.  It's been beautiful watching the girls and boys grow so big!  Some members of the group started out single and are now married, some have had biological children since, generally a lot has happened but I am so grateful to God for bringing this group into my life.  I have so many good friends, some I've known for 30+ years now, and I am so thankful for that because I wouldn't be in the place I am in now if not for the ongoing encouragement of my circles of friends.  However, the ladies from this group have really become a source of support throughout the wait and they are the people who really "get it."  I know the rest of you try, and I bless you for that, but only those who have been there /done that, know what it's really like to endure this wait and uncertainty, to parent a child who is culturally, physically and biologically different than you, who has also endured this wait and uncertainty, and to do it on your own.  We get together regularly but not often, however every time I meet them, I leave with a stronger sense of friendship.

When I got home from dinner tonight, I looked up Chinese quotes on friendship and thought I might include one here.  The first one that popped up was...

"Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead."
- Chinese Proverb

It doesn't quite have the lyrical ring to it that I was looking for!!!!!!
So I searched again and found these, not Chinese necessarily, but meaningful just the same...

"With good friends . . . even water drunk together is sweet enough.”  
  (I think this one does have Chinese origin!)

"Strangers are just friends waiting to happen."

"Sometimes you pick your friends, sometimes they pick you."

Most of my friendship circles have happened by chance.  People I have worked with and people I went to school with and were naturally drawn towards have become lifelong friends.  But for the most part, I didn't actively seek out any of them except the people I now know through adoption.  When I first started this journey to motherhood, I searched high and low for adoption groups, single mothers groups, whatever I could find, and injected myself into all of them.  Not all of them turned out to be a good fit and I've let some of them go, but for the ones that stuck, I'm grateful, thanks!