Monday, June 06, 2011

My favorite Mary Kay product!

Last week I listed four of my top five favorite Mary Kay products.  Now it's time for my #1 product of Mary Kay.

But you won't try my most favorite Mary Kay product on at any make up party.

Ten years ago, I'd been married for just about 20 months.  While I loved being married and totally enjoyed the company of my new husband, I felt lonely and really needed some girlfriends.

I began to pray that God would bring a best friend into my life, not realizing that he'd been orchestrating a special friendship for years.

One day, Kathy, a friend from church, invited me to be her guest at her Mary Kay meeting.  How could I resist?  I'm a girly girl who loves playing with make up, and I was excited to hang out with Kathy.  That night at the meeting, I got hooked.  Mary Kay was for me!  I loved the product, the company seemed great, and it seemed like a fun group of women who I needed at that time.  It wasn't long after that that I signed my agreement and started my own Mary Kay business.

Just weeks into my new business venture, I met another brand new consultant.  Her name was Michelle.  We hit it off immediately, and I felt an instant bond with her.  She was just darling; she had a beautiful smile, and such a sweet, gentle spirit.  We happened to both work as secretaries at churches in the same town, so we scheduled to meet for lunch one day - "Noodles at Noon!"

It turns out that we had a bunch of friends in common.  She had friends in college who I knew in high school, and vice versa.  How had we not met before this?  Also, we both spent separate summers in British Columbia for mission trips, and stayed with the same host family for those summers!  We were chatting about it one day when I remembered that there was a picture over my bed that one of the children had drawn.  After looking at my photo album from the trip, we saw it:  there was a rainbow... and the name "Michelle."  Not only had we stayed in the same house (a year apart), we had slept in the same bed!  It was so fun to discover all of the ways God had crossed our paths.  

That first lunch date at Noodles was followed by many, many more.  I knew immediately that God had brought Mary Kay into my life so that I'd meet Michelle.  I was so thankful to have a buddy at my Mary Kay meetings, and we even attended Seminar in Dallas together.  Here we are posing with a cardboard cut-out of Mary Kay herself:
And here we are with the prized pink Cadillac we dreamed about driving - it all seems like a hilarious dream to me all these years later!
But it didn't take long for our friendship to transcend Mary Kay and to take deep roots.  Mary Kay was quickly replaced by talks about marriage and dreams of babies.  We cried together and laughed together and prayed together.  When baby fever set in big time, we prayed for each other until we could report seeing two little lines on those pregnancy tests, just a month apart.  We giggled as our bellies grew and we started waddling into our Mary Kay meetings, only to sit there brainstorming names and counting kicks instead of learning new recruiting techniques.

Michelle moved to California just a couple of months before our first babies were born.  She called me when she went into labor and I did the same.  Finally at Christmas we got to meet each other's babies:
Years later, our kids are buddies and each time we're all together, we're just tickled at all that's happened during our friendship.  Michelle's even been in town to visit me in the hospital twice!

Carson and Emma are exactly one month apart, Livi and Addie are almost exactly two months apart, and Spencer and Chloe are not quite three months apart.  (And Brody just fits right in the mix.)  Can it get any closer?
I've gushed about Michelle before, but anyone who knows her feels SO LUCKY to know her.  She is so loyal and trustworthy, and silly and funny.
She has walked me through some of the saddest days of my life and laughed with me more times than I can count.  She knows some really ugly and cruddy stuff about me and loves me anyway.  She's even seen me without make up on and STILL wants to be my friend.
And so even though just last month I celebrated ten years with Mary Kay, to me it marks ten years of a friendship truly blessed by God.  I'm thankful for Mary Kay, but I was never in it for the money (um, good thing!) or the fame or the prizes.  The best thing I've ever gotten from my Mary Kay business is a friendship that is dear to my heart.
And that's why Michelle earns the number one spot for my favorite Mary Kay product.  

I love you, friend!  Thanks for making my life brighter, for pointing me towards Jesus and for loving me unconditionally.  You are the BEST!  I'm so thankful I prayed for you so many years ago and became a Mary Kay consultant.  You're way better than any lipstick on that order form.

7 comments:

  1. I was hanging on the edge of my seat for this last product...I knew it had to be good. I completely agree with everything you said about that sweet girl. So now we have to add consistency to all her traits we love. That is so cool to hear about all the things you had in common, even before meeting!!

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  2. Angie! I was waiting in suspense for the last product, too, and was not disappointed. This quote by CS Lewis on the death of his friend describes exactly how I feel:

    "In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him 'to myself' now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, 'Here comes one who will augment our loves.'"

    Love you! And our Michelle, too!

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  3. I love this! How awesome to have a friend sent by God. (You'll have to tell me what you did to get him to answer you...I've been praying for YEARS (YEARS!) for God to bring me a true BFF, and I'm still waiting.) Anyway, sweet post and funny pics. I've actually seen those old MK pics of you two and the one of you with your firstborn babies. ?? I'm not sure when or how, but I remember. And I remember that hilarious pic of her little boy crying beside Chloe.

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  4. This is actually kinda weird but I found Michelle's blog last year either right before or right after our anniversary trip to California. Her header at the time was a pic of the area that we went to and I left her a comment. She replied that she'd seen my name/link on your blog and was one of your good friends. It was CRAZY! Small world, huh?

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  5. What a blessing to have such a special friend in your life. True friends are a gift from God. I loved reading your journey to find her! God is so good!

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  6. So grateful for you, friend! Thanks for this post, it was so sweet and fun and totally makes me miss you! Carson's cheeks crack me up.....I never realized how big they really were till I look back on pictures like that....woah! And look how much older we look at the birth of Chloe and little Spency. ha!
    Love you!

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  7. Aw, love this post. :) (& Michelle, too!)
    And- I think I was at that MK conference, wasn't I Michelle? I remember going to one in Dallas.... hmmm..... I will have to look back & see if we were there together?

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