My Chicks...

You know those times when you are gasping for breath and tears are streaming down your cramped cheeks and your stomach hurts so bad that you might throw up? You know when someone has said something so ridiculously, disgustingly offensive that you can't stop laughing uncontrollably? Well, these are my chicks. Well, most of them. There are a few missing. I've been friends with these women for over 10 years, some for almost 20.

The importance of these women in my life can not be overstated. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure I can state it. I have visited three of these women and their children in the hospital. Two of them were there when I found out my ex husband had had a girlfriend for a year and a half of our two year marriage. Two of them exacted a brilliant revenge. Three offered to help me bury bodies.

Three of us, while in college, have had our friends around us in apartments, waiting outside bathroom doors while we took pregnancy tests. Two of them were positive. Three of us went through infertility. Five of us have been taken out for wine and tears after miscarriage. Five of us have been bridesmaids for four of us. Two of us have been carried through divorces. Seven of us have had casseroles delivered at our doors under the pretense of burying our noses into the soft neck of a newborn baby. Five of us have a Master's Degree. Two of us never finished college. Six of us are stay at home moms. Three of us are Republicans and three of us are Democrats, while two of us are Independent. We will all fight you to the death to protect women and children. Two of us are millionaires, three of us scrape by by the skin of our teeth. Three of us have impeccably decorated houses and five of us...well. Eight of us help bring the simple material things to a family who struggles at Christmastime. We have eight husbands and twenty four children among us.

I thank God for these amazing, intelligent, hilarious, spirited, crazy group of friends. When I think about moving away, and the idea of having to make friends again, I just kind of shut down. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make friends as a Pastor's Wife? It sucks. You can't really be yourself. You always have this other woman floating around you. But here, I can simply be Cakes. Warts and all. Dirty jokes and all. wine drinking and all.