True Friendship

This past weekend we had a lesson in sunday school talking a bit about true friendship, the kind where you are not only friends but you feel like the other person holds a piece of your heart. I was with my friend Megan over the past week and a bit and she and I talked a little bit about true friendship. I feel like I have learned so much about what it means to be a true friend and through the example of others I have become better.

I have had many friends over the years but I have found that over the past couple years I have become closer with a few. I have never been one to fit in so to speak but I always had good people surrounding me. I find it interesting that most of my very closest friends are the ones I went to high school with, there are a few others that I didn't but for the most part it is. I talk about Megan quite a bit lately but it's only because I look up to her in every way possible. Often as you go through difficult things you see who your friends are and I seem to have quite a few.

But Megan...Megan was one of the first people I turned to when things in my life started to go sour. Two years ago it was at her wedding that I saw what a real relationship looked like. She didn't have to but after she got back from her honeymoon she invited me over, this was the first of many times when she would be a listening ear as I expressed some of the deepest hurts of my life. She only said things when I asked her advice and she was always the one that if I was on my knees praying for a friend was the one who would call. True friendship doesn't always mean knowing all the answers or fixing problems, it's being able to be there for someone and support them as they need it. Then you become the same for them.

I look at how Megan interacts with her boys and the more I see the more I want to be like that when I become a mother again, I always have. When I first found out I was pregnant I asked Megan for advice and I'm sure I will next time around. I don't think I will ever be able to pay her back for being the friend I have needed over the past two years.

She's not the only one and the more I look back the more I realize I was never alone. True friendship doesn't mean you talk to them all the time or are always together, to me it means that no matter how long it has been since you've talked, you can call them and be able to share and talk as if no time has passed. It develops over time and often becomes something deeper and more meaningful then you thought possible.

I find that it is because of the deep ties you have to each other sometimes friends can tell you things that not many others can, they have earned the right to be completely honest and although you may not always want to hear it, you respect it. Family can often become true friends and the more I get older then more I realize how much of a friend they have been all along.

I feel like sometimes you feel an immediate connection to someone and you don't understand why. My roommate Patricia and I seem to have that connection, I feel like it was only through moving in with her that I have been able to more fully heal. She gets me out of the house (most of the time) and we can have deep conversations with each other. I feel like she's one of those people that I may have known before I came to earth.

I also love my little friends, it doesn't matter how I feel going to work, they always make my day. I can't imagine doing anything else for a career. They have become some of my closest friends and I am privileged to be able to watch them grow and develop.

I am so glad to have so many friends and hope each of them know how much it means to me that I have them in my life :)