My friend Rainy Flake

     It's 1:18 a.m. And I can't sleep because I'm beside myself with happiness thinking about my adventure. 

     I want to tell you about my friend Laraine. Her dad and my mom are brother and sister, and we've been fast friends since childhood. 

     I am the oldest girl of nine kids, and she the oldest girl of eleven. We were raised out of town, on nearby farms, and had about one million cousins. Our mothers greatly depended on us to help with the day to day mountain of work that it takes to maintain large families. But still, any chance we got we were playing in the wash, in the canyon, anywhere and everywhere. 

     Laraine is one of my best 'tender mercies' of my earth life experience. I love her dearly. I'll tell just two quick stories that will help you understand. 

     I married very young. At age eighteen I had a baby. When the baby was a few weeks old, my twelve year old sister, Janet, was hit by a pickup and killed instantly while riding her bike home from a softball game. 

      Of course this was a traumatic devastation to our family. The night of the funeral, I was laying on the sofa in my parent's living room alone. I felt so heartbroken and emotionally hashed, I remember wondering if I would die also just from pain. 

     Laraine came over and lay on the other sofa and we started talking...telling stories about Janet and our growing up days. We started laughing about some of Janet's cute antics. The more we talked the more we giggled and suddenly I felt this very calming hope surge through me that life would go on, could go on. And that even with a broken heart you can still laugh. The two emotions can exist simontaneously. That experience was...because Laraine helped me. 

     The next story happened several years later. My husband and I were attending BYU and our fourth child, Jackie, a four year old broke her arm badly and needed surgery and pins. I had to smile because when she finally came out of the anesthetic, her first shaky words were, "let's call Laraine."

      She knew exactly what to do when in a tight spot. Call Laraine. 

      Laraine is smart, witty, talented, spiritually strong, deliciously irreverent. But my favorite thing about her is she can ALWAYS make me laugh. Needless to say...I quite adore her. Man my life must be charmed to have a friend that knows me through and through and still likes me. 

     And now I get to go on a most amazing adventure with her. 

     Here we are at my wedding reception...the beginning of another amazing adventure.