… and it feels so good.
We had a family reunion of sorts recently. 
Once upon a time, in a magical land known as Southern California, four couples met together to study God’s word and share each others’ lives.
The group expanded and decreased and ebbed and flowed for a number of years. But the basic four had a special bond. They vacationed together. They brought meals when babies were born. They prayed for each other during job transitions and life decisions.
Two of the couples moved away.
Still they stayed in touch.
If the American divorce rate is 50% (and it sort of is … I learned lots of interesting facts when I googled and researched American divorce rate), then the law of averages would say that in the roughly twenty-eight years since we started meeting together, two of the couples would be divorced.
But we’re all still married to our first spouses.
Another (divorced) friend at church recently asked me about our closest long-time couple friends, if there were any divorces among them. Two of my dearest girl-friends have gone through divorce, but in our core group of couple friends the answer is easy.
No.
Not one.
That same friend made the connection I hadn’t. He said, “Makes sense. You’ve surrounded yourself with like-minded people, couples in it for the long haul.”
When we started vacationing together, there were five children in the group. There are now eight—all grown-up—and four grandchildren. We were quite the crowd last week.
We had a ball catching up, eating and drinking together, playing cards. We had a ping-pong and hula-hoop forest golf tournament. We shared our most memorable stories of other vacations.
Most important, we reinforced those bonds so they’ll stick for another twenty or so years.
Your Captivating Heart was given to me several years ago by a dear friend. It’s always on my nightstand where I can turn to it for a few pages of inspiration. 
kitchen of the monastery. He disciplined himself constantly to remember that he everything he did and thought was in service to God. He believed (and lived out) that we are always in the presence of Jehovah-God. Whether we live in the city or the suburbs, work in a soup kitchen or on Wall Street, what we do has eternal significance in God’s plan.
Writer of Sweet Small Town Stories of Love and Family 