We all need one – a network of people around us who support and love us and pray for us.

I’ve got a strong one.  My network is filled with family and friends – old and new – who care about me and want the best for me. Thank you!  You encourage me and love me.  You listen to me and forgive me.  You try to understand me, try to be patient with me and do a good job of putting up with me when I need it.  You make me smile and you make me laugh.  You bring happy tears to my eyes as you hug me and tell me you love me for the thousandth time.

Love you!

Growing up, I never realized the importance of Framily.  Framily are friends who are as close or even closer to you than family.  Looking back, I can see that my parents had a few friends who were framily to them, but my mother was the youngest of sixteen children so we were mainly surrounded by tons of aunts and uncles and cousins.  Hundreds of them.  Time for framily was limited.

After getting out of the Army, I drove all of my belongs down to Phoenix where I had never visited and knew no one.  I was in search of the sun.  After growing up in the Iowa winters with mountains of snow and months of frozen noses and a summer that was defined by 3 weeks of painful humidity, I wasn’t going to stay there.  Needless to say, I’ve gotten lots of sunshine these past 38 years.

I knew nobody when I came to Phoenix but I had learned from moving around in the military that there are good people wherever I went.  I started attending ASU where I knew I would get to meet a lot of people.  I made some friends, fell in love and married my husband.  I still keep in touch with several friends who were in my life from back then.

Many of my treasured framily come from being active in Christ’s Community Church in Glendale for 28 years. Church is a great place to find a framily.  I have very important relationships that began there and bloomed through the years.  Our children were brought up in that spiritual family and several of their church friends became their own framily.  My children’s framilies are still a priority in their lives.  Davey’s framily from that time are an integral part of the support network for his wife and children.  Several of them are at the core of creating and running the David Glasser Foundation.

In the last 2 1/2 years, members of my Blue Family have also become framily – especially Davey’s squad and their wives.   We have gone through hell together and that creates a unique bond that we will always share.  As a framily, we are supporting each other and working together to continue Davey’s legacy of love through the David Glasser Foundation.

In the craziness that defines our culture today, ya’ gotta have a net.  Do you have one?

Miss you, Davey.

#8144loveyou