my beloved Friend

In celebration of my dearest, most wonderful,
hilarious, kind, adventurous, precious

F*R*I*E*N*D

on her 25th birthday,
I am writing a "Top 10 Moments with AEH" post.


10. Sitting across from AEH and FH at Bush's Chicken in Waco after she had moved in to the apt and declaring to FH,
"We're practically the same person."
And then spending the next lovely years figuring out how much of a reality that was.

9. Coming home from Europe at 1 AM jet lagged and exhausted, and STILL finding myself staying up until 4 AM with AEH baking and catching up and pondering why we decided to spend that semester apart.

8. Taking Christian Hermeneutics and Racquetball together senior year at Baylor.
She hit me with her racket at least once a class.
And I'm sorry I ever suggested we take the Hermeneutics class.

("IT'S IMPORTANT TO LOOK HOT! IT'S IMPORTANT TO WEAR BIKINIS!")

7. When we first got "real jobs" after college where our only survival tactic was to e-mail back and forth to discuss how bad of a choice that was.
(And then planning our inevitable delay of adulthood via YWAM...)

See subject line and message: (also note misspelled name from corporate. wonk)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bower, Jenny
Date: Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 3:52 PM
Subject: RE: blah blah blahblah wednesdayblah blahblah blah
To: Anne Hennighausen



Hahaha true that.
8 minutes


Jennie Bower

6. YWAM in general.
Beaches. Kona coffee. Confession and repentance. Dried mangos.
bliss.

5. Whatever point it was that we decided to start calling each other "Friend."
(Capital because it is "THE" friend)

4. Our talk of the joint condo when we are married to our respective husbands....and how the condo will promise to unite us...till we are old and gray...but still fun and like to snorkel.

3. The moment captured below.
Proving the fact that whenever we talk/hang out/mention one another,
there is inevitable laughing with hysteria.
Without. Fail.
She is probably the funniest person I know.

2. Rebukes
(both ways) (but mostly my way)
How we discussed that some girl forebodingly told us we would not leave YWAM as friends, because of hard it is spiritually and emotionally.

AND HOW WE SHOWED HER WHO IS BOSS,
because we came away from those months with a deeper, truer, richer relationship with the Lord and with each other based on total honesty, vulnerability and brokenness.


1. How she told me she was going back to YWAM,
leaving the comfort of her home, friends and growing family,
because of the boldness and strength of her relationship with Jesus,
and because she is too adventurous to settle for anything less than
AMAZING.






Dear AEH:

"Whatever it is souls are made of,
yours and mine are the same"

love,

Friend

Miss Hazelyn

So, one of the 12.2 jobs that I have currently puts me in direct contact with very old people. And by very old, I do mean nonagenarians.

I met Hazelyn one day during breakfast (It was "Hazeline," but she changed it when she went to college). She is a crinkly, tiny black woman with huge glasses that take up most her face and some of her forehead.

She still has noble cheeks.

She wears her hair combed back, in a bun. It's mostly white, but there are still stubborn gray and black streaks around her temples. She moves slowly, and I usually have to use all my strength to help her when she wants to stand up.

Today, I helped her take a worn book down from the bookshelf so she could read up on her husband's liver condition. She wanted to see how likely it would be that he would need to be on dialysis. He's 14 years her senior, is now debilitated with Alzheimer's, and lives in a home in Houston.

She grew up in the deep south, segregated but not poor. Her slow, southern drawl gives her heritage away especially when she transitions from one subject to the next (or rather, when she keeps trying to get herself back on the original subject at hand) with her "anyyyyywaaays" expression.

One of her first jobs was working as a teacher, in a school where she was the only black woman. The principal there, a white male, made sure that she was always backed by the administration, even when white students' parents would complain that she would steal things from the white students. She was 23.

She is now 78 and lives lives in a country where a black man is president. Her home now is apart from her husband, her children, and she has a flat screen that she never uses. She writes notes down on any available piece of paper in an attempt to remember things she means to look up later, or people she encounters, but usually loses them shortly after. She keeps a daily journal. Today, she had me print my name and address for her "just to have on hand."

Sometimes as I sit listening to her as she travels from thought to thought, I go between watching her and her slow, deliberate movements, and looking at the portrait painted of her and her husband, he standing with his arm on her shoulder, she seated in a leather chair.

And sometimes, the things she talks about seem like a least a million years ago.

Funnies

Favorite quotes from life here with F&M:

1. "Jennie is the new Anne." (M)

2. "What an adventure you are on." (F & his amazing ability to have a godly perspective)

3. "Your cooking makes me think we are on an episode of 'Touched by an Angel.'" (F)

4. "Mary has something to confess to you.." (F when M has had a taste of something with my name on it in the fridge)

5. "Don't make sing!" (M said in a wonderfully dramatic accent)

Found

"But I think you are already in the meshes of the net! The Holy Spirit is after you. I doubt if you'll get away!"
- CS Lewis


"For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the Sons of God."
- Romans 8:19

Praise Him for new sons.