Slumber Parties & Tea Rooms

All right ladies, listen up. Slumber parties aren't just for little girls - don't let anyone tell you any different!

Last night a few girlfriends and I got together for a long-overdue, overnight, all-girl evening. We watched movies and ate pizza and a variety of other party foods with absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever. We talked until we could no longer keep our eyes open. We slept in this morning, then talked some more over cappuccinos and hot tea. We made breakfast, then talked some more over breakfast tacos and orange juice. Through it all, we laughed, we cried, we laughed some more.

After the last of the party-goers had gone home or to Saturday jobs, Wendy (my dear friend and co-laborer in ministry) and I made our way to the White Gloves Tea Room to catch the last few minutes of a City-Wide Tea hosted by Thrive (our church's women's ministry) and the White Gloves proprietor, our friend Nancee. We sat in a little nook in the back,
surrounded by rosy wallpaper, glass-topped tables, china figurines, and candles. We indulged in little plates filled with a variety of sweet breads, scones, mini-muffins, and tiny cookies. We sipped Autumn Spice tea from china teacups, served from silver teapots. And still, we talked.

We love our husbands deeply and passionately and cannot imagine our lives without the men who keep us balanced and grounded, entertained, protected, and provided for. But our relationships with the other women in our lives offer us a place where we can be free-hearted little girls, silly teenagers and strong, amazing women all at the same time. We understand each other from a place deep inside ourselves that somehow enables us to laugh at ourselves and each other, to cry with each other, and to appreciate one another with an unspoken, almost spiritual gratitude.

Over time we grow to trust each other with our hopes and dreams, our secret sorrows and fears, and our most embarrassing moments. As our relationships develop from casual acquaintances to beloved sisters, we grow from learning more about each other and about ourselves.

I am blessed to have in my life some amazing women - women who love deeply, laugh easily and live every moment with passion. Some have experienced unbelievable heartache and have lived to tell about it. Some are goofy and crazy girls who can find a party in any setting at a moment's notice. Some are gentle and kind, generously serving everyone around them with style and grace. Others are quiet and strong, steadily providing the structure and glue that holds the things and people around them together.

I can only hope and pray that I will somehow be able to draw from their strength, grace, and fun-loving spirits to become a woman who possesses all the finest qualities of these amazing women. I believe that as women, our lives are fullest and freest when we embrace all the inner beauty and feminine wonder we have been created with - a beauty that is a little bit party girl, a little bit Wonder Woman and a little bit princess.

Slumber parties aren't just for little girls - don't let anyone tell you any different!

Thank You, Father, for the precious sisterhood
we women share with one another. Bless each
one with a sense of hope and wonder in who we can
be and are becoming, with a oneness with You,
and with a vision for the future that includes the
fulfillment of the dreams You have placed in our hearts.