The Key

Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

—Proverbs 11:25

My friend Annette and I met our freshman year in college. She was funny and fun, a strong, intuitive, wise person whose words carried serious weight with me, just as they do now.

We always said that sometime we wanted to live in the same town, and one day, against all odds, Annette and her husband, Andrew, and their ninety-five pound dog, Sydney, moved to our town.

While they looked for a house, they lived with us. For two months, the four of us and the dog tripped over each other and laughed and told stories and talked about how hard it is to move. The day they moved into their new house, they left before we were up, and when I went downstairs there was a card from them. When I opened the card, a key slid out, and I started to cry, because this special, crazy season was over, and they were giving back our key. But it wasn’t our house key. It was their new house key. The card said, “You are as much a part of our home as we have been a part of yours.”

The closer you get to someone, the more power that friendship has to make your life bigger and richer.