CPR For The Weak

She said she was tired and I told her the same. Our conversation last week at dinner, it sprinkled across the table, the lamenting and loving, dusting our laps with the graces and the struggles. My friend and I we go way back, to a time when our bones were strong enough to sit on stadium bleachers without back support. The past, it leaves skid marks on the heart, and this friend, she knows the tire tracks and how they came to be. And I tell her how exhausted I am and she says the same and I know that is the answer that every friend sometimes needs to hear. I understand. I feel the same. You're going to be OK. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it well, "A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud." My friend, she listened and truly heard, and I waited on her life stories too, and we shared this present day journey as only good friends can; with truth swaddling our words. The afflictions, they evaporated in midst of veracious confessions, and a pent-up sigh expelled into forgiving atmosphere. My husband recently lost a good friend to cancer and I draw this friendship closer, hold it like a thousand-dollar bouquet of yellow roses. To possess genuine friends along the journey is a treasure, a gift to count and appreciate. I have a number, and when life is low and heart beats faint, the person He delivers to resuscitate, always, always, arrives exactly on time.