Friendship

I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now, since Friday, to be exact, and it's been a process to put my unexpressed feelings into words. There are centuries of thoughts, millions of words, to try to express and explain the phenomenon of friendship.

Someone with whom I'm acquainted, but have yet to don the proud title of 'Friend' wrote a very inspiring, very thought provoking article. She pushed me over the edge, so to speak.

Friday Brett and I had a rare opportunity to reunite with his high school buddies. Keep in mind, these are just the close friends, the 'group' of people who were tight back in the day. We haven't seen some of them for a few years, and others I've never even met (or heard of, in some cases). But there is a group of 6 that are the most interesting to me. This group consists of Brett's Seminary Leadership from his awkward days. What amazes me about these people, the girls particularly, is their abiding friendship. I know that they haven't seen each other in years, either. But they sit down and they start talking like they haven't been apart for even a day, let alone separated by years and hundreds of miles, in some cases.

The feeling there was one of sweet reunion, combined with an ease that only friendship can induce. Even I felt the effect of this ease and found myself sucked into the force of their undying friendship. I, who just happened along, who 'married in', who deserves their friendship almost as much as the pine cone that sat next to me on the picnic table bench. Regardless, these women made me feel as much at home as if I spent those formative years side by side with them.

This reunion invoked so many different emotions. Envy, gratitude and hope, primarily. Envy, because, let's face it, lasting friendship like theirs is rare, at least in my world. Gratitude because of their accepting attitude towards me; and hope. Hope that there are still people in this world who look to friendship and the wonderful blessing it is. You could tell in their attitude and mannerisms that everything they said to one another was devoured and considered as the greatest, most important thing at the moment. That nothing any of them could have said would cause the others to upstart and leave them hanging.

I've had several relationships fall apart, either getting lost to the demands of the world, or dissipating in the way that unnurtured friendships tend to do. I've had heart breaks, literal, painful, all consuming heart breaks that have rendered me friendless because I didn't feel I deserved such things, which, in retrospect, is ridiculous. Regardless. And I have friends that are timeless. Friends that have been there since I was born in some cases, and continue on though we don't see each other nearly as often as we would like. I have friends with whom I know I can tell anything, and they'll guard my thoughts and feelings in the same way they would guard their own. I have a best friend who loves me and all my personalities; and I am so grateful, so blessed, to get to spend eternity with him.

"Friendship, pure, unselfish friendship, all through life's allotted span, nurtures, strengthens, widens, lengthens, mans relationship with man."