Sisters that are not family....

Last night I got together with my sisters.  Not ones that were born into my family but ones that God alone has placed into my life.  Precious blessings, thank you Lord.  We get together a few times a year as a collective group and we eat and talk and eat and talk and eat some more and then....we share.  Now you may think that talking and sharing are the same things but let me assure you they are not.  We hunker down as a group.  We have a devotional together and then we share our hearts.  Our secrets.  Our hurts.  Our deep emotions.  Our praises.  We pray for one another.  We cry with one another.  We laugh and laugh with and at one another.  We each take a turn and those words are spoken and we each just listen.  What hurts one sister hurts all of us sisters.  We rejoice with one another.  Many praises this year.  Many answered prayers.  One sweet, dear sister had a daughter suffer a miscarriage early in the year only to be waiting on the arrival of a new grand daughter any day now.  Ashes to beauty, baby.  One has an upcoming surgery and we will love on her like crazy because we love her like crazy.  One is moving.  One is retiring soon.  One is praising the Lord for a broken relationship in her young adult sons' life.  She is so sweet she even prays for the young lady that she wanted prayed out of his life.  That girl deserves God's best for her...and it was not her son.  One is concerned for her own health.  Needing to lose weight and get her self under control.  I been there, still there and will be there again....I am sure.  One has both of her in-laws recently diagnosed with dementia and alzheimers.  Tough.  Very tough.  One has a daughter just finishing up all her radiation and back in college and struggling to get all caught up.  Hard.  So hard to watch your child struggle.  And you really cannot help them.  Bunch of tears on that.  Buckets of them.  One of us struggles with loneliness.  Widowed a few years ago after 30+ years of marriage.  It is hard to be single and alone when you are over 55.  This world is so not kind to us mature gals.  Then there was me....  My turn.  I flipped through our book that I write all these requests and praises on pages and pages.  Each and every single time we have met over years and years I say various things.  Praise Him for things.  We all do.  But there has been one request that I end with each time we meet.  Pray for me and my loneliness.  I have been lonely for years and years.  I was an incredibly lonely wife.  Then I have been alone for many years.  Alone and lonely are not the same thing.  Not at all.  Sure I have been lonely quite a bit over the last five + years but my loneliness had diminished.  I had gotten to a place where I could say I was content.  Pleased with my life.  My very full life.  God was and is my portion....enough.  Then God has seemingly answered my prayer.  That long endured prayer.  He has sent a wonderful man my way that has completely captured my heart.  I still in the very back recesses of my mind and heart think that God may be teasing me.  I do not do all this whole "wonderful man" thing so hot.  It scares me like crazy and I cry all the time because I am just so overwhelmed. But God....does not tease.  He doesn't have that quality.  Our devotional was on the Fruit of the Spirit and teasing is not listed.  In any translation.  This is a praise I have longed to utter.  While I have other needs in my life that only God can handle.  Big ones too.  He will handle them.  But as for this praise that I have long awaited for.....ashes to beauty, baby....ashes to beauty.