Moo cow

Growing up in rural Wisconsin I've had more than my fair share of time spent around cows. Dairy farms dotted the landscape around my hometown and a lot of my friends grew up on family farms. My dad even ran a farm for a while through his farm machinery dealership. But no farm experience can top my run in with The Cow. Ironically enough I wasn't on a farm when I met The Cow. I was, unfortunately, in a car with my friend, Sarah. And we were seventeen.

My friend, Sarah, had a mother who was an EMT. Her mom had seen a lot of car accidents, so Sarah was the most cautious driver of all my teenage friends because she had heard the results of reckless driving firsthand. Sarah's car didn't budge until everyone was buckled in. No exceptions. Sarah never sped. It was as though her car was incapable of getting over the fifty-five mph mark. That red dash was magical in that the speedometer needle couldn't break its barrier. So when riding with Sarah, one felt very safe.

One Spring evening, just as dusk was beginning to make an appearance, Sarah and I were on a back country road, headed to the next town over to get some ice cream at the Dairy Queen. We were coming from a classmate's birthday party and we were having a great time...laughing, talking, and enjoying the freedom of being able to go for ice cream on a whim. The sky was clear, the weather was warm and our windows were down.We came up over a hill, Sarah doing the usual fifty-five. At the bottom of the small hill a rather large Holstein appeared out of nowhere. Now, I realize that cows aren't the sleekest or fastest moving creatures. It's not like they're deer. Let's just call a spade a spade. But this cow had incredible leaping abilities. I have suspicion that it was related to the one that went over the moon. It jumped out from behind some overgrown brush that was growing right at the side of the road. I braced myself by extending my arms and grabbing onto the dashboard and I think I yelled, "Cow!" What happened next seems like it was in slow motion, like in the movies.

Sarah hit the brake but didn't stand on it like I would have. It seemed like we slowed down very gradually, as if she were approaching a far off stop sign. It felt like we were taking forever to stop. I could have done my nails or watched an episode of "Growing Pains" in the time it took to slow down. I remember thinking, "Hurry up and slow down! Hurry up and slow down!" We were probably going about 15 mph when we came into contact with The Cow. If I had been driving, there would have been rubber on the road and we would have been completely stopped before we got to The Cow. But I wasn't driving.

We pretty much clipped The Cow's legs out from under her, on my side of the car. The Cow slid on her side going across the hood, her face right in front of the windshield. This part was all in slow motion as well. I swear I locked eyes with that cow. She was looking at me out of the corner of one eye and it followed me as she slid by. She was scared. Fear was in her big, brown eye. The only thing I could think was, "This cow is coming right through the windshield and it's going to be on my lap. It's going to be heavy and it's going to hurt me." That's what went through my mind in that split second. I did not want a heavy and wounded (possibly dead) animal anywhere near me. I didn't care how much free beef I might get out of the deal.

The Cow slid off Sarah's side of the car. The old girl landed on her side with a spectacular thud and then clumsily got up in a hurry as though she were a college student walking on an icy sidewalk and quickly stood - hoping no one saw her go down. The Cow was a bit dazed and staggered a bit. But she quickly recovered and kind of trotted up into the yard across the road to join the rest of the herd that had escaped the same pasture. It was getting dark and the yard light had just flickered on. It was illuminating several cows standing around in the yard.

Sarah and I just looked at each other in awe. In a matter of seconds we had gone from driving with the windows down and the radio cranked and the two of us talking loudly to complete silence. The car had killed. Sarah turned the key and nothing happened. Panic showed up for a split second and Sarah tried again. No dice. Then Sarah remembered the car wasn't in park. It had killed while in drive. She put the gear into park and tried again. The car started up and panic scampered away. We sat there, idling in the car, in the middle of the road, at the bottom of a hill, while it was getting dark. Not the smartest thing we've ever done but we didn't exactly have our wits about us yet. Going forward had not occurred to us yet. We were still stunned. I think the first thing Sarah said was, "I need to call my dad." I suggested we drive to my grandparents' house who lived in the town we were headed to. But Sarah wanted to go to her ex-boyfriend's house. She had dated him a while ago but I think she was wanting to see him again. What better excuse to show up at his house than to use his phone? She put the car in drive and insisted we go to his house.

It just so happened that the ex-boyfriend was having a party that night with a live band in the garage and everything. There were cars and kids all over the place. I didn't know any of them. I really don't think I could have been more embarrassed. I felt like without us saying a word, everyone could see the story on our faces...we had just hit The Cow and needed help. We were not there to party, but rather to be rescued by Sarah's dad.

Sarah's dad called the cops from his house to report the incident, then he drove over to the town we were in and we followed him home in Sarah's car. Almost an hour after the impact we finally got to Sarah's house. When her mom asked, "Girls, what happened?" we both burst into tears. Talk about a delayed reaction! Sarah's mom asked, "Why are you crying?" "We don't know!" we wailed.

Later we found out that we were the third car to hit a cow in that area in the past few months. The farmer had trouble keeping his fence mended. The Cow was okay and unbelievably the only damage to Sarah's car were streaks of manure across the white hood from the manure-caked-sliding hooves. Not a dent or a scratch.

And we never did get our Dairy Queen ice cream that night. But did we ever get a story. It didn't take long for our adventure to spread around school and we got a lot of laughs out of telling it. And twenty years later, it still comes up from time to time.

Moo cow.

And the circle widens...

Let's talk about friends. No, not the TV show; although, I could write a fairly long post about that, since I've seen every episode of the 10 season run many, many, many, many times. Many. But, that's for another day.

Today I want to talk about friends in my life. Both old and new.

I've never really had trouble making friends, or ever had a lack of quality friendships. Thankfully. Seriously...I have thanked God for this fact more than once. I have had the blessing of having some solid, quality friendships over my lifetime. Heck, I'm still friends with my very first friend, Joey. She's six months younger than me and we grew up on the same country road. That is one strong bond right there.

Some of the "Monson" girls at one of my bridal showers

Of course friends have come and gone as I have moved from my hometown, attended a couple of colleges, changed jobs, and switched churches over the past three decades. You can't keep every friendship you cultivate as you keep meeting more and more people. It would be emotionally exhausting. You really only need a handful of best friends. But I still have solid friendships from every single one of those areas of my life with one exception: my three years at UW-Eau Claire. It was a very dark time, friend-making wise. I walked away with only three semi-solid friendships from my time there and I rarely have any contact with any of them. I think I didn't make many friends during my last three years of college because there was no way I could top my experience at my first college. I had spent my first two years of college in a super-nova blast of friendship cultivating. I started school at a private Christian college (Go, Eagles!) and in the two years there, developed relationships with fellow Christ followers that are still in tact today! Boy, a common love for Jesus is like cement when creating a new friendship. It's some strong stuff.

Sarah, me, & Melody in my dorm room on my 19th birthday

Some of my favorite friendships are those where we may not be close now, but were great friends in the past. Then life changed, as it always does, and some distance (actual miles) were put in between us. And even though some time has passed since we had some face-to-face time, when we see one another, it's the most heart-warming thing. We pick up as though we just saw each other last week. That just happened to me recently. What IS that? How does that work? It happens to me time and time again. Man, I guess the bonds you make with a good friend can withstand just about any amount of time! Particularly when the foundation of your friendship is Christ.

My Eaglebrook Church singles Bible Study group doing our "jazz hands" pose

This mysterious phenomenon of reconnecting with old friends leads me to think of a couple of the girls I had as friends in elementary and Jr. High and then they moved away. I bet if I saw them tomorrow, we would chat as though there was no twenty-some-year gap between now and when we last saw each other as friends. That span of time would just evaporate into nothing as we talked and laughed together. In fact, that happened to me. I reconnected a couple of years ago with a friend that moved away in 1987. 1987! We are all grown up...our lives have taken different paths...we are different from who we were in 1987 (thankfully!). And yet...instant re-connection. What a miracle. Truly. A miracle! Oh, the bonds of girlfriends can be so STRONG!

With some friends from Reeve Church (the church I grew up in) at a Twins game

And then there are new friends. How this works truly amazes me. I got married five months ago. I have known my husband for less than two years. Which means that we were both thirty-somethings with well-established circles of friends. Working our two separate circles into one another's lives could prove to be a tricky thing. Will he like my friends? Will I like his? Well, I'm happy to report a big sigh of relief on this one. My husband is good at friendships. Really good at them. He's loyal, works at maintaining them, and is sort of the glue that keeps certain circles of his friends stickin' together. He has a lot of friends. This could have been a potential relationship land-mine. But no worries. As our relationship has grown, so has my circle of very new friends. He has some quality people in his life. As he says, "I stopped hanging out with jerks a long time ago." And it has brought me such delight to get to know these friends. I marvel at how some of these have become almost insta-friendships with very little effort! I am clicking with so many of them. I even told him my ranking of my favorites (which will be kept between the two of us). I am so excited to see where these new friendships take me and the role they will play in my life. It's such a blessing to meet someone, spend some time chatting, and feel like they are an old friend that I'm picking up with...instead of the reality of it...getting to know them from scratch. I sincerely do not take this for granted. It has not been this way for me in the past. I was in a relationship a long time ago and he had a tight-knit circle of friends. I had trouble connecting with many of them. In fact, there was ONE person that I felt it was easy to be around and I could be myself. One. The rest...I had a hard time relating to them...coming up with things to talk about...being myself as we spent time together. It all felt very forced. Not so with my husband's friends.

A gaggle of my husband's co-workers (current & former) at our reception

My former pastor used to say that friendships are sort of like an archery target. You have a lot of people in the outer ring. People who are acquaintances. Those you occasionally spend time with and enjoy being with. My outer ring has exploded since I've been married. It's bursting at the seams! What joy! The next ring are your close friends. The ones you invest time in on a fairly regular basis. He said most people have 8-10 friends in this ring of the target. This ring has grown for me as well and I would say it is far above 8-10. There are already 4 or 5 friends I have made through my husband's circle that I would place in this ring. It's easy to tell them things, to be a little vulnerable with them, to trust that mysterious connection. Then there's the inner-ring. Your "3 am friends." The people you could call in the middle of the night or in an emotional emergency...the friends you rely on the most. The ones you go to time and time again and say, "Pray for me." Supposedly you need only 2 or 3 people in this ring because any more than that and it becomes emotionally over-bearing. It takes time invested in these friends and your time can only be spread around so much. My inner ring is a little more crowded than 2 or 3. But that's okay because I can handle that.

On vacation in Canada with my husband's old friends and my new friends, Molly & Jay

Hey, old friends: "A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words." -Unknown

Hey, new friends: "Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."- Anais Nin