Hopeful Thoughts

Recently, I’ve found myself bombarded with these two terms. They seem to be hitting me from all directions. While working with the Jump Start program, the little three week teaching job that I’ve recently acquired, I’ve been teaching the concept of functions. Every functional relationship has an independent variable and a dependent variable. We have discussed the definition of “independent” and “dependent” and looked at contexts outside of the math classroom. All of the kids have decided that they want to be independent.

Yesterday I received a note from an old friend. (We’ve been friends a long time, and she’s many years older than I am, but she is not old!) She’s a precious lady that I’ve been blessed to know as both my “other mother” when I was a kid, and more recently as a dear friend and mentor when we worked together in the same school for three years. It’s been six years since I left that job, and we were recently able to get together and chat about old times.

A result of our time was reflection on both sides about what our friendship had meant to each of us. It also seemed to spur on a renewal of the friendship she’d had with my mother, as I her note mentioned. She referred to a conversation she and my mother had over dinner about how they had raised us girls, her daughter and my sister and I, to be independent women.

I began to think about that. All most of us ever want as kids is to get through school and get out of our parents house so that we can be independent. I suppose that getting a scholarship to college, moving to another state to get married, and traveling to foreign countries might make me look like I’ve been pretty successful at achieving independence.

The reality is that I am probably more dependent now than ever before in my life, and I love it that way.

Between my God, my husband, my church family, my friends, my sister, and even my parents, I find myself leaning on others at every turn. And I am so HAPPY to do so. The relationships in my life are a lovely balance of giving and receiving so that all needs are met. None go without as all share out of their excess. I’m not even talking about the material. It’s spiritual encouragement and prayer, but I’m convinced that this dependancy is a good thing and how relationships are meant to work. I love being able to help a friend in need and am so blessed by those who’ve been there to comfort me.

Our Creator designed us to be dependent first on Him and then on each other.

I am dependent.