Friendship

(That graphic makes me so happy! It literally makes me the happiest human ever and… yeah. It’s awesome. Thank you fabulous people who didn’t look at me like I was absolutely insane when I asked if they could text me a fun feet/shoe selfie. )

I have been thinking a lot about friendship lately.

You see, when I first moved here, I drafted an article on friendship that began as follows:

Instafriendship! The new and improved friendships for you! Just walk up to people, say “Hello!” and with this Instafriendship, you will be best friends in no time at all! Come by and get your jar of Instafriendship today by calling 120-3992! Act now to get a pair of mismatching socks with the deal.”

(Please don’t call that number. I made it up.)

But, now I’m like, “Can I have half a can of Teleportafriend?”

I still miss my friends in Washington.

As the school year is doing this really dumb thing called “Start,” (What happened to my summerr??) so I wanted to talk a little bit about friendships.

The first thing is that friendship is fabulous. Having people to hang out with that don’t mind if you ramble for hours, who will go out to coffee when you’re having a moment and who will tell you about their lives and frustrations and people you can laugh with and live life with:  it’s absolutely the best thing ever.

It’s awesome to be able to laugh about the dumb things you did in Shakespeare, to mourn the loss of a cookie (I ate the last cookie because I’m a horrible human…) and to squeal about the amazing opportunities that God lies in front of us... to cut this short, I highly recommend having friends.

If you don’t have friends, I’ll be your friend. We can have chocolate and coffee on the deck of my new house.

The second thing is that friendship is hard. This I’m assuming is self explanatory, but I’ll probably end up talking about this point on and off throughout this post, because… well. Just because.

My third point about friendship is that they grow.

Friendships start small.

And then they grow.

Sometimes they grow quickly, other times they grow silently and without you realizing it.

But eventually they do blossom.

It’s a hard job being a friend, it honestly is. It means investing emotions and your heart to people who are so human and prone to mess up.

And sometimes who you have the opportunity to talk to them before they have their first cup of coffee, which is probably hard.

Overall, friends can either bring you up or take you down. They can influence you to become the person you will be when you are a grown up.

Paul talks about this saying:

“Do not be fooled: “Bad friends will ruin good habits…” –1 Corinthians 15:33

Your ‘bad friends’ will influence you and although you might not seethe affects in your own life, they will be there none the less.

I’m so thankful that I’ve had amazing friends that are super supportive and who I love like siblings. It’s a fabulous gift!

As I was trying to find a good verse to close a post about friendship with, this one came to mind. It basically says everything I wanted to say in a much clearer way:

“Two people are better than one, because they get more done working together. If one falls down, the other can help him up. But it is bad for the person who is alone and falls, because no one is there to help… An enemy might defeat one person, but two people can defend themselves; a rope that is woven of three strings is hard to break.”  Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

~Rachel Joy

PS: It’s because of that verse that I think it’s so, so important to pray for your friends: because we are all pretty clumsy sometimes, and fall down occasionally.  Praying is essential for any friendship! Write that down, because it’s pretty important.