an adventure to Hodag country...

By yourself you’re unprotected.  
With a friend you can face the worst.  
Can you round up a third?  
A three-stranded rope isn’t easily snapped.

                              Ecclesiastes 4:12 (the Message) 

There is something incredibly precious about friendships that stand the test of time… particularly the ones that have been sustained from our childhood years. I think this is one of the many reasons why I am so attached to my husband… other than the fact that he is the most awesome person I know & the fact that he is smokin’ hot.  We were kids together. We grew up together. He knows everything about me so there’s no fooling that guy. 

Min & I, circa 1987

Outside of my family, my other constant has been my BFF Mindi. We’ve been thick as thieves since we were 15 years old & played junior varsity basketball together. She was really good. I was… well, let’s just say I was really entertaining.  We did all the typical teen things together; hung out at lunch together, went to sporting events & trekked thirty miles to the movies. We had sleepovers & went to dances & talked about boys & laughed a lot. One time, when I was grounded, she stayed home & watched the high school football game with me from the roof of my garage. Our senior year, she chose to be a bridesmaid in my wedding, even though that meant she had to rewear that ugly, pink, monstrosity of a dress to the prom a month later. Bless her heart. 

After high school, we went our separate ways… she headed off to college & I headed to North Carolina to be a wife. We didn’t talk a lot but we did manage to get together to hang out from time to time & when we did, it was like time had never passed. We just managed to pick up, right where we left off.

My Mindi friend has always been strong. Her life’s journey has made her this way. She’s not afraid to stand her ground in a confrontation or from a difficult situation.  She is courageous & assertive & if I was in a fight, I’d want her on my side. She could totally kick my butt. 

Last year, Mindi met Jesus & it changed her life. While we talk at least once a week on the phone, because she lives to far away & I don’t have of the privilege to see her every day; I haven’t seen the transformation fully. 

This past weekend, Min & I met half-way to spend a little girl time together.  We planned some time to spend snowshoeing, exploring a couple of little towns in Northern Wisconsin & to vowed to take a picture of at least one hodag (a) . As usual, on top of all that, we managed to eat way too much ‘not-so-good-for-you’ food, drank way too much fancy coffee & stayed up far too late giggling.

Something had changed though…  Mindi.  As I watched her over the weekend I saw something that a conversation over the phone could not tell me. My Mindi friend has become a softie.  Now don’t get me wrong, she’s still strong but she’s also compassionate. She’s still courageous but she’s also gentle. As she has allowed Jesus full access into her life, He is taking her strengths & her weaknesses & He is making her exactly who He wants her to be.  I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am for my beautiful friend & for my friendship with her. 

God is so scary good! 

Mindi & I with... the Hodag

 You can go through life and make new friends every year - every month practically - but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. 

Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.” 

- Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

(a) The Hodag is a folkloric animal of the American state of Wisconsin. Its history is focused mainly around the city of Rhinelander in northern Wisconsin, where it was said to have been discovered.

In 1893, newspapers reported the discovery of a Hodag in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It had "the head of a frog, the grinning face of a giant elephant, thick short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur, and a long tail with spears at the end". The reports were instigated by well-known Wisconsin land surveyor, timber cruiser and prankster Eugene Shepard,^[1] who rounded up a group of local people to capture the animal.^[2] The group reported that they needed to use dynamite to kill the beast.^[3]
A photograph of the remains of the charred beast was released to the media. It was "the fiercest, strangest, most frightening monster ever to set razor sharp claws on the earth. It became extinct after its main food source, all white bulldogs, became scarce in the area." -Wikipedia