One of my very dearest friends lives right next door to me. We have been friends since I purchased my home in 2007. We have been more than friends though because of our common link to God. We are actually sisters in Christ. We have seen each other through some very difficult trials in our lives. I don’t know what I would have done without her next door, for she has been a source of comfort and joy in my life.

I was her friend and one of her confidantes when she decided to divorce her husband. I was also blessed enough to be invited to her marriage ceremony when she married her second husband. He is a wonderful husband to her. He is also a pastor and because of the Lord’s work in his life they now have to move. I am on the verge of tears every time I think about them moving.

Last summer when I went to their wedding I was in a slump financially and I could not give them a wedding present. I felt bad but my dear friend said she only cared that I had attended, she didn’t care about a gift. As God would have it, I set next to the wife of the photographer during the wedding. She was a lovely lady. We chatted as if we had been friends all of our lives. We soon exchanged phone numbers.

I called her a couple of times. I really liked her but she lived in a different part of the metroplex than I did so we never did get together. I did ask her if her husband could send me some pictures of the wedding because an idea was starting to form for a belated wedding gift. He sent me some beautiful photos of the wedding and refused any payment for then. God bless that man.

Then the day after the wedding I saw a bouquet of flowers on my front porch. My dear friend had gifted me some flowers from her wedding. She is so very sweet. I dried those flowers out and kept the photos in a safe place. The flowers moved from one room to another in my house and finally I put them in my bedroom. They haunted me every day as I looked at them knowing that I needed to use them in a gift for my friend.

Lately the Lord has put on my heart to tie up loose ends. You know those tasks that keep going back on our task list again and again? Well my friends wedding photos and flowers had been on my task list for close to a year and they were moving, so it was time that task was done.

I took the wedding photos and my son’s senior picture into Hobby Lobby. I talked to a sweet young man, Mark, about how much it would cost to frame the photos. It would take over $200 to frame the wedding photos. My jaw dropped and I told him I could not afford that. I told him I wanted to include the flowers in some way with the photos. He said I should use a shadow box. Then we started talking about how much it would cost to custom mat the photos for a shadow box. It was only 22$ for a custom matting for those photos.

I had three photos and the wedding announcement that I wanted to incorporate into a cross design for the shadow box. I didn’t know what to expect but when I went to pick up the matted photographs what I saw far exceeded any expectation I had had. Mark did a perfect job! He put the items in the shape of a cross and then outlined them with black to bring the symbol of the cross to the attention of every person who would look at the shadow box.

When I brought it home I inserted some of the dried flowers on the bottom of the shadow box. I did not glue them as I had initially intended because I wanted my girlfriend to be able to add or subtract from the flowers as she pleased.

I think this may be the most wonderful wedding gift I have ever given. Lord knows it should be, it took close to a year for me to get it done. My goodness, lol.