Making Friends Outside The Square

I've been called square all my life.

Be it in my dress sense, my taste in music, my academic leanings, I've tended towards conformity. I am nothing if not conservative. In my need for structure and sense, I am anal. I need things and people to fall into neat and predictable categories, so that I can understand them. If I ever have an offbeat idea, I am likely to revel in it for a few seconds, then push it to the back of my mind, and never go there again.

Today, I spent 3 hours with a 70 yo friend from church. She is a full-time artist whose work spans a huge range of subjects and emotions. Some I can relate to, like her landscapes. I've got one of them on my living room wall, right above our TV. Some of her work I cannot understand at all (or do not want to), like the ones she exhibited at Girls' Night In (in support of breast cancer sufferers) last year.

What is really interesting is how we have formed a friendship despite our 30-year age gap. It's something I would not have thought possible if I had remained in Sg. Other than my extended family members, I cannot remember any seniors taking an interest in or wanting to be actively involved in my family life.

We had a lovely Chicken Mornay for lunch, which she served in a white soup bowl (the kind with handles like you find in restaurants), and a kind of fork that I've never seen before. Eating soup with a fork is a first for me.

She showed me round her home and her art studio, and we went for a walk around the retirement village where she lives. We saw the rose garden, the playground (for the grandkids who come to visit), the clubhouse, pool, BBQ area... Such a peaceful and secure place and so beautifully maintained. I mentioned that we used to live on the other side of the fence when we first moved into the area. I told her I wouldn't mind living in a place like that when I get to the qualifying age (which is really only another 15 years)!

It was the conversations that really touched me. My family background. My personal colours (which I don't know because I've never done the colour thing; I have since learned that I am a Winter). Her observations of Beth from their time painting together at Sunday School. Her thoughts about our family. Her son, a Dux of school who majored in Law and Commerce but is now in charge of social work projects in Africa. The importance of not forcing our children to be what we expect of them, but freeing them to be what God has intended for them to be.

I believe God is gently drawing me into the lives of people I can make a difference to, and I know that in the process I am going to be stretched, shaped and molded beyond my imagination.