You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Dale Carnegie

I am getting ready to leave tomorrow AM to the Emerging Women’s Leadership Initiative event in Atlanta. I am honored to have been invited, since none of us ever really think we are doing anything special. We just do what we can’t help but do, so someone noticed…that is nice really. And while I’ve read on blogs and heard others say nice things about me and trust me, again, I am honored..I want to say that it’s not about me. It’s about all the others that I will meet there. As I read the list of people attending, I can’t wait to laugh, share, dream and yes, even cry together. Everyone is so unique and gifted. Everyone has their own story to share about the sum total of their experiences in both the sacred and secular worlds that have made them the wonderful women that they are.

It was the new blogger introduced by Jen Lemen, Sarah’s site that I was reminded again how women’s friendships are so important to our lives. I have had the great blessing of meeting Edna a fellow sojourner just in the nick of time for me [before I went crazy]. I have other women as friends and I long for other women in my life that are sincere in their love of God, family and of peculiar people [I am peculiar]. My hope is that in Atlanta, I will connect deeply with some and learn from all and vice versa. I believe for most of us to even want to get to “this” place, we have embarked on the journey inward. I know I did. Dag Hammerskjvld was the one who said “The longest journey of any person is the journey inward.” We can’t be who we are not. Faking it can only be done for a little while. I have a feeling those who journey for deeper things are done with the faking…I do not expect to meet any posers in Atlanta. I do expect that every woman I meet in Atlanta, has purposed to live their life so that people will be better off for having known them. I am going because I am more interested in them, then in me hoping they are interested in me.

I will report on what happened from my perspective but I know this is a ‘God thing’ so I expect “great things.”