Friends

Have you seen those gratitude posts on blogs lately? Like my sweet friend Tara's? Or Maggie's? I love these posts and am encouraged by them, but I must confess that they also make me feel guilty for not being as disciplined in the practice of thankfulness as I need to be. I need to incorporate such a practice into my life and hope to do so soon. As a start...

Recently, I have found myself incredibly grateful lately for friends. I mean, real friends...the ones you can spill your guts to without fear that they will judge you or misunderstand you or think less of you. As I think back through each season of my life, the memories that give me the greatest joy all revolve around remembering who my friends were during that time. In preschool there were Peter and Brad and Jack. In elementary school there were Kathleen and Ethan, Mark and Ann. In middle school Susan, Kathryn, and Marni. In high school, Sandy, Veronica, Kathryn, Susan, Sallie, Rob, Shannon. In college there were dozens, but especially Jenny, Jaclyn, and Hannah. In China there was my whole team. And now, one of the joys of being married is that I get to live with my best friend without ever fearing that one of us will have to move away. In Louisville God has provided Cari, Melanie, Cindy, Laurel, Lisa, Emily, Megan, and Ashley. Even as I write these names, I'm sure I'm inadvertently leaving many out whom the Lord used profoundly in my life to love me, support me, encourage me, and (maybe the best part of friendship) to actually like me! How would I have ever made it through life without friends?

Reflecting upon sweet friendships makes Christ's statement in John 15:15 that more meaningful: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you."

I can't help but think of Lewis' chapter on Friendship in The Four Loves. Here are two of my favorite parts that have come to mind recently:

"In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day’s walking have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze and our drinks at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life—natural life—has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?"

"In Friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, 'Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,' can truly say to every group of Christian friends, 'You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.' The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside. Let us not reckon without our Host."

So, thank you, Father, for my friends.