While looking for a fun place for Sharlet to play, I found a women's bible study that included a wonderful children's program and we joined it last fall. Our study lasted until the middle of March and it was very hard to leave on that last day of class. How will we know if Jill and her husband find jobs and are able to keep their house? Or if Mercedes' brother's cancer is treatable? How will Bev, who joined our group late because she is new to Holland, continue to feel connected without us? We decided to meet at JP's coffee shop in downtown Holland on the first Tuesday of April, which is today.
When I arrived Tricia was already there, a young mom with three children who are just old enough for her to feel comfortable slipping away for a couple of hours. Mercedes, a alightly older than me grandmother, greeted us looking just as beautiful as always. When Kim, a home-schooling mom with three pre-teenaged students, arrived we decided a bigger table was needed and settled into a large circle of leather sofas and chairs in the next room. Jill found us there and so did Bev, a fortyish single woman with no children who's mother died just before she joined our study. Everyone wore a warm smile as we balanced coffee mugs on our laps and sweet conversation back and forth and side to side, sometimes breaking off in smaller groups for just a moment or two.
Jill, about the same age as Kim and Tricia and mother of two, has smiling eyes and they were never brighter. No, she and her husband are not employed yet, but he's thinking of starting his own business and she is a dutch dance director which helps a little bit. Their house? It's still uncertain whether they will keep it or not. Mercedes' brother is worse and she asked us to keep praying for him. I learned that Kim likes to knit and Jill is a seamstress. Tricia runs a very busy day-care in her home and Mercedes is a retired school teacher who raised two of her grandchildren all by herself. As we laughed about kids, grandkids, and the different jobs we've held, it occured to me...though we may be from different towns and backgrounds, even different decades, all of us still love and long to gather in a circle like grown up little girls and share our lives with each other. That's why we decided today to meet at the same time and place the first Tuesday of every month, it's fun!
