Have you ever had one of those months where you get a mouse in your kitchen, your stove breaks, you’re pregnant during what feels like a heat wave (and wearing charming compression stockings that make you look and feel about 80), the leftovers get burned and set off smoke alarms late at night, and on top of it all, your back goes out?

Times like this, it’s amazing to have a mind-reading friend, a really good old friend from university, one of the people who is like family to you, email you out of the blue and offer to stop by and bring you dinner. The friend you wanted to call for help but didn’t want to disturb, who heard your silent prayer and took time out of writing her thesis to help you. This is what happened to me.

My friend Katie brought a green salad, Thai chicken soup, cherries and her sweet company. Simply wonderful. We dove into a great conversation about homeschool, writing and being contemplative in the midst of busy daily life. How being prayerful helps us to focus and be inspired when we write. Nothing like a really good talk to feed the soul.

Here are some pictures of the dinner we were lucky enough to receive!

Thai Chicken Soup with red peppers:

Don’t forget fresh lime…

“Yum!” says baby.

My 8 year old said: “It tastes Thai-tastic!” and “The cucumbers are cucumber-licious!”

She’s my big helper.

“Aaah, that’s cool!” My 6 year old had seconds of chicken and salad and said “It tastes good.”

So Katie, thanks for being so lovely! My world is a more beautiful place because of you, and dinner was delicious, as was the break from cooking! 😉 Getting to chat with you over iced coffee (life-saver!) reaffirmed the goodness of the world, and put little struggles in perspective. Life can’t help but be wonderful when you are loved.

Also recently my Dad brought me flowers, my mom called to say how much she loves me, my brother found and cleaned up the icky dead mouse (heroic!), my landlords bought us a brand new oven, my friend Ida brought us bread from Cobbs and Milton brought us treats from Starbucks, and my friend Sara took my big girls swimming with her daughter twice to give them an outing and me a break. There is so much to be grateful for! For every challenge, I bet we could all count three blessings. One of them is that challenges help us to be humble enough to reach out and ask for help, which gives people a chance to be heroes and show us how much they love us.

May you all be blessed with friends and family like mine!