One of my cherished friends gave me a book yesterday. To me, the gift of a book is one of the most caring of all. It requires knowledge of the person you are giving it to. After all, you don’t want to give them something that they would not be interested in. Giving a book is showing someone that you know them and care for them.
My friend knows me. She accepts me for who I am– my good days, my cranky days, my ocd days. It is so nice to not feel judged and not feel the need to conform to what I think she wants me to be. She is my OCD checker, my enthusiastic encourager, my positive sympathizer. She lives life large and has taught me that it is useless trying to be anyone but yourself. I’m still learning that one!
The book that she gave me is called cold tangerines by Shauna Niequist. I started reading it yesterday and got through the first essay called “on waiting.” I could have written it. Okay, maybe not exactly the way she did, but still. She talks about the movies that have the “Big Moment”. You know, the moment when everything comes together and changes the characters’ lives forever. Niequist writes, “I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn’t what it looked like in the movies” (p. 16). It hit me that this is how I’ve seen life and I’ve felt a little bit like a failure because my life was not “interesting” enough to matter.
Well, to that I say HA! I am going to take my little moments that make up my life and use them to have the best life I can. My life is not boring. It is my life and I enjoy it, for the most part. Thank you, my friend, for giving this book to me. I can’t wait to see what other insights I glean from reading it.
Quietly Askew 
Friends are wonderful!