Two women stood at a cross roads...

One day two women met for the first time as they stood by a swimming pool. They were similar ages…both women of faith…both in a daze. As they watched three children splashing and playing, they talked and their spirits connected as sisters. They understood each other, but they’d just met.

As young women they’d both desired to be wives and mothers. Both women had spent two decades, following their dreams, happy, content, knowing who they were and satisfied with life. But life had changed suddenly, unexpectedly with no real explanations.

The first women’s two children had grown up. They were adults now not really needing her anymore. She let them go, which every mother knows is good and right and normal, but not very easy. About that same time, her husband walked away from their marriage, abandoning her, trading her in for a younger, newer model. Two and a half decades of being together…over. Just like that. Naturally this woman was devastated. Who was she now? What was her purpose? What was she to do with the rest of her life? She still had so much to give. Where would God lead her? Her thoughts…travel the world, helping the poor and needy...giving.

The second woman had recently let two of her five children go, but she was still reeling from a childhood cancer diagnosis and treatment of her youngest. She’d spent sixteen years homeschooling, sacrificing, raising her children. But now she was exhausted emotionally, spiritually, wiped out from three years of intense medical situations. Who was she now? She was still a wife, but the dance with her husband had changed. She was still a mother, but now the medical arena filled most of her time. Homeschooling was impossible, but the school where her children would attend needed training on how to care for her youngest child’s medical needs. Could she train them? Could she trust them, letting her baby go? How would she fill her “free” time? Where was God leading her?

They cried together as they shared their lives standing by a swimming pool. They connected instantly two sister hearts whose lives had forever been marked in a single moment by someone else’s words…”I’m leaving you”…”Your son has cancer”. Standing there, talking, they looked up, the brilliant puffs of clouds were skirting across the deep blue sky, carried on the wind, shifting, changing as just as their lives had. They understood each other as only sister’s can. They gained strength from each other. They both knew God would lead them and they both knew they would be ok.