We get our pizza and start to eat when I mention my Mom’s tooth problem which in turn leads her to saying she needs to get her front tooth redone before she starts looking like Nanny McPhee. I laugh and mention how crowded my bottom teeth are and that I think it may be pushing a crown out of whack.

She says, “Maybe they should just pull one and they would straighten out.” I say, “With my luck the gap wouldn’t close and I would be left with one tooth missing in front like Si from Duck Dynasty.” That mental image gets me laughing so hard I am afraid to take a drink. It’s the times we laugh like that over nothing that I see something like God-light in her eyes.

It’s a pure and holy laughter and it flows like living water when two people of like mind gather.

Sitting there at the Pizza place, I thought of how our lives intersected all those years ago and how it was all so arranged by God. We were to be rescuers to each other yet at the time we didn’t know it. We were too busy each carrying our separate loads of super-sized grief.

She had just courageously left behind the only life she had ever known. It was either that or die. She was searching for life, and hope.  And I was busy trying to convince everyone and myself that I didn’t need anyone. The only friend I wanted was my husband and he had died.

At night I would sit alone and write letters to him that he would never see, except from Heaven.

One of the first things that struck me about her was her contagious laugh. And even though she was hurting she still tried to open the door to friendship.

And I did my level best to keep that door shut.

But there was something she saw in me that made her keep trying.

Somehow enough of Jesus shined through my dysfunction and sadness because she wondered where I got my peace.

And when I finally let down the wall and invited her in, it was almost like we were getting reaquainted after a long absence instead of starting a new friendship. And then she met Jesus and it only got better.

And 22 years later all I can see is the joy and laughter and wonder I would have missed out on had she not opened that door, had I not walked through it.

How many people have I dismissed that I should have embraced? How many sparks of life have I extinguished rather than rekindled? How many times have I refused the invitation to join God in his supernatural work? Margaret Feinberg

What draws us together is a mystery and a wonder. What makes total strangers click and feel they’ve known each other all their lives? It’s a connection that can’t be fully explained but that’s part of the beauty of it. What I do know is that it’s what God wants for us and what He made us for.

He calls us friends first and Disciples second, and I believe He sees not only the person we are, but the person we will become.

When we connect here in this place, I don’t see Bloggers, or Facebookers. I see friends.  I see brothers and sisters. I see family.

And I am thankful for every one of you and what you bring to my life.