“Thank you for being on my team.”
Words from my friend bear witness to this friendship we’re nurturing, to the time we’ve spent catching up over tea, in prayer, studying God’s word. The times we’ve carried one another’s burdens, rejoiced over each other’s victories.
“Gather your team” we’d heard the speaker say. This wise woman at the podium, in the evening of her life, had given a diverse group of women gathered for worship and teaching a peek into the journey that’s been her life. She’s lived simply but with a heart open to all that God placed in her path. Divorced early in her marriage, she trusted God to lead her as a single parent, to bless her remarriage, and to bring comfort in the tragic too-soon death of her beloved second husband and a son.
At a round table with friends I’ve known for decades and with several new to this season of my life, I’d heard the lovely woman communing with us remind the gathering of this:
Whatever life brings, God has gone before you. He is already there. Share on X
Then she said it. “Gather your team.”
Surround yourself with people who know you, she said, those you can trust, those who’ll hang with you in the hard days and dance with you in the good.
“Some friends are for a season,” she told us. “And that’s okay.”
“A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing, but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.” Psalm 68:5-6
My Grandmothers. Sisters-in-law and lifelong teammates.
Always, always cultivate friends who are willing, committed, available. Find friends and make a “family.”
If we choose wisely, she said, we need never been lonely. Even in widowhood. Especially in the evening of our lives.
Then one more piece of advice fell from her lips — use your gifts. “I am a knitter of socks,” she said, smiling as she held up a pair in progress. “I’m using my gifts and God is pleased with me.”
More than a knitter of socks, she is a generous weaver of wise words, passed down, spread around and soaked up.
Thank you, Lord, for women who take seriously the command “to be reverent in the way they live….to teach what is good.” Titus 2:3
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