I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends….

I was blessed in 3rd grade with meeting my best friend.  We were inseparable from 5th grade on.  This was before facebook, twitter, instagram and snapchat so when I say we were inseperable I mean that in the literal sense.  We muddled through elementary school blissfully unaware of upcoming life challenges.  We suffered through embarrassing crushes and painfully awkward middle school moments and somehow survived high school without too much irreparable damage.  And then the unthinkable occurred and we became seperable.  Each following a different path that would lead us back to the same road in the end…. nursing.  One helping with infants’ medical needs and the other working with children and their mental health needs…..

        bookends as my grandmother had fondly called us.

While exploring “my path” I was blessed again to find another “best friend” who could be more aptly described as a partner in crime then anything else.  We had to have had a guardian angel in our college years.  Making crazy middle of the night trips home and getting lost on many occassions during road trips but realizing we were REALLY directionally challenged when we couldn’t find which highway to get on to make a road trip to State.  It is quiet embarrassing looking back now to think that we had to stop in Lauderdale, MS and point to Highway 45 and say “Is that the road that will take us to Starkville?”  I would like to stress that this was pre-Mapquest and cellphones with GPS.  Sadly to say, years later I am not much better at the road trip navigation.  And after four or five years of college, a lot of parties, college drama and somehow attending enough classes to pass ….we graduated and once again that little thing called LIFE pushed another friend and I in different directions.  She would go on to work with children in the school setting as I pursued work with children in the hospital setting.  Once again two paths merging into the same road.

And then the “working years” began and co-workers became friends which later became family.  Through the challenges of coping with co-workers’ love life drama, late nights building props for haunted houses, Christmas parties gone terribly wrong, interviews that went worse (imagine thinking you are interviewing someone for the dietary dept. and they start stripping mid-interview….. Yes, Rae got punked), births of children and grandchildren and unexpected loss of family and friends… a support system of “best friends” was formed.  A group of friends that saw each other through good times, bad times and unthinkable times.

Now Life has me on another path.  One I would have never chosen.  I look at all the “best friends” that I have collected along the way of living.  These friends who are so much better than Facebook friends and twitter followers. Some of them I rarely see but know they are there if I need them.  Others I see almost daily or receive a text message saying “Just wanted to let you know I’m thinking of you”.  One friend often will send comments of “Christian would have loved that!”.  Some of these same friends who were there when I said I wanted to “do something for Christian”. They have been my sounding board, my t-shirt designers, my cheerleader squad and so much more.

As this year is nearing an end I would like to thank all the “friends” I have collected as I have skipped, tripped and stumbled my way through Life.  I don’t know where I would be without all of you who have taken care of me along the way….. because I truly do get by because of a little help from a lot of friends.

Magnolia Son was honored to partner with the Boy’s & Girl’s Club to assist 41 kids in receiving new shoes.  I would like to thank Ricky Hood, Jermaine and Ms. Linda who gave us the opportunity to meet our annual goal of serving 100+ kids in 2015.

“I think I’ll miss you most of all.”
The Wizard of Oz