The week has wound down to Friday again. I love Fridays not because the week is “finally” over but because it’s a day that gives the week an exclamation point. Or a period, as the case may be. This Friday is an exclamation point around here. Closure to a long and full week; closure with joy. Hope your Friday punctuates such a week as well. Savor the finds of your week…and mine.
1) Stranger Things – Buzz abounds right now as the Netflix sci-fi TV series Stranger Things debuts its Season 2 this weekend. I haven’t seen even the first series because of its spookiness; the latest trailer creeps me out. However, this series is crazy popular with younger folks. The brilliant music sets the tone of the suspenseful nature of the story…set in the 1980s, with the disappearance of a boy and his friends and parents trying to search out what happened.
Beyond the Guitar‘s Nathan Mills has just posted his arrangements of some of the lovely haunting melodies from the series. Watch here.
2) Fierce Friends – How grateful I am for friends who don’t give up on me. You have friends like these, too – those who love us enough to tell us the truth without ripping our hearts out. Friends who will keep loving us no matter the distance or ideologies that could separate us but don’t. These are fierce friends…friends who “stick closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). Just this week, I looked around a room full of women who deeply love each other but have some very different stances on issues that matter to all of us. The tension was palpable but the love more so. Our culture today seems peopled with friends when convenient, fair weather friends, and friends with benefits. Friends who politic together, work together, play sports together, or drink together. Take away the activity, and the friendship fades. What a wonder are these fierce friends who stay with us through the worst…those we know have our backs and we have theirs.
Photo Credit: Quotesta
“Real Spiritual friendship is eagerly helping one another know, serve, love, and resemble God in deeper and deeper ways.”
—Timothy Keller
“When connections are real, they simply never die. They can be buried, or ignored or walked away from, but never broken. If you’ve deeply resonated with another person or place, the connection remains despite any distance, time, situation, lack of presence, or circumstance… Real connections live on forever.” —Victoria Erickson
“True friends aren’t the ones who make your problems disappear. They are the ones who won’t disappear when you’re facing problems.” —Author Unknown
“If you fishin’ for a friend you just gon’ catch and release, then I ain’t got no desire to be your friend…but if you is lookin’ for a real friend, then I’ll be one. Forever.” ― Ron Hall, Same Kind of Different as Me
Who are some of your fierce friends? Please share in Comments if you want to give a salute to some of them.
3) Sarah Harmening – This past June, a lovely 17-year-old girl from Alabama on her way to love on children in Botswana…died. It was a bus accident in Georgia and we all heard/read about it in the US. Her name is Sarah Harmening. It’s been four months and the wound of her loss is still fresh and painful for those who knew and loved her.
Photo Credit: Fox 5 Atlanta
So young yet she reflects a walk with God that radiates His goodness and glory…she seemed one glad for the opportunities to serve Him but more glad for the day to see Him. I look forward to meeting her in Heaven some day. In memorial to her, I’d like to re-post her last journal entry, written while on that fateful bus trip:
“I was just sitting here on the bus feeling a little sad. I guess because I’m going to be gone so long and I was a little uncomfortable. Then I decided to read my Bible. I prayed and opened up to 1 Peter 5 and 2 Peter 1. Pretty much everything I read applied to me now. It talked about watching over the flock entrusted to you which would be my little buddies in Botswana.’”
“I am also called to humble myself which I will need to do and that also means being a little uncomfortable. It talked about the devil prowling about like a lion seeking whom he may devour which he will especially be doing on this mission trip. And now it is our mission trip. And how we will need to be alert and of sober mind. And lastly, how we will get to participate in His Divine Nature! I mean how awesome is that?
So mostly, I was just reminded of why I am here and that God has called me here and His has done this for a reason. So, I know He’s going to do incredible things.”
In a text she sent just before the crash, she quoted 1 Peter 5:23-25 and her thoughts about the text:
Since you have been born again—not of perishable seed but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God. For
All flesh is like grass,
and all its glory like a flower of the grass.
The grass withers, and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord endures forever. – 1 Peter 5:23-25
“‘This is such a great reminder. We are like a wisp of smoke. We are only here for a moment and this not about us, life is not about us, it’s about God who is eternal. So, I want to dedicate the one moment I am here, completely and entirely to Him’”.
Mother of Teen in Church Bus Accident Shares Her Final Journey Entry – Fox 5 Atlanta
Two Still Hospitalized After Fatal Atlanta Church Bus Crash – Fox 5 Atlanta
Added: Sarah’s Mom writes about her: The “Little Cricket” Martyr
4) Mother Daughter Bucket List – I’m not much on bucket lists because really all of life is such an amazing ride, I haven’t thought to add anything that isn’t already happening. Then writer Susan Merrill posted a mother daughter bucket list and linked to various other sweet possibilities (for other combinations of family members). It got me thinking so I asked my daughter what she might like to do together:
Thanksgiving, farmers market, flea market, beach day, apple picking, college campus if we were ever near there, baby pics, movie set, farm, cooking family recipes together, rainy day movies, read your favorite books from childhood, picnic…
Got me thinking and making plans to execute some of the above. Merrill’s lists include other family members, so I’ll be asking.
Photo Credit: Hall of Fame Moms, Pinterest
5) Same Kind of Different As Me – A true story captured by Ron Hall, Denver Moore, and Lynn Vincent, Same Kind of Different As Me is now a film. I loved the book and am looking forward to the movie.
― Denver Moore, Same Kind of Different as Me
“Tell ’em I’m a nobody that is tryin’ to tell everybody about somebody that can save anybody,” Moore told Hall.
That’s the wrap on this week’s Friday Faves. Would love for you to share in Comments what has made this week all the more special. I am so grateful you read my blog. Please subscribe if you don’t mind. Blessings until next time, and be kind to yourself and each other. If you read this far, you are among those fiercest of friends, I’m sure.
Bonus
Fall in Tennessee
Photo Credit: Lois Martin
Niagara Falls
Photo Credit: Allison Lovejoy
Advent will be here before we turn around. Free this week on Kindle: Give Me the Word: Advent and Other Poems 2000-2015 by Laura M. Fabrycky
What the Most Resilient People Have in Common – Lolly Daskal
8 Things We Need to Stop Doing with Our Phones – Scott Bender