Today's Swonderings

From W@H:

Did you have a best friend in school? Do you have a best friend now? How have your thoughts and perceptions about friendship changed over the years?

I didn't have a best friend growing up. My family moved quite a bit (or I changed schools) and it was hard to make a real "best friend." I remember being in about 10th grade and starting to pray for a best friend. I went through high school and when I reached college, during my sophmore year, I found a group of girls that I really connected with - there were 5 of us.



Four out of the 5 of us were either music majors or minors and the other eventually went into a nursing program. I am still close with all except one who I have lost touch with. (Two are actually the friends that I went a spent several days with last week in Houston).

Even though we were extremely close in college, because I was a year older, my senior year, I felt myself being separated from them because of my student teaching and change of focus to post-college. I would now say that I have two extremely close/best friend. One is my friends Gina. She and I are polar opposites, but through times of enmity and struggle in our friendship, we have grown very close because of our differences, if that makes sense. Where I am weak, she is strong, and vice-versa. Our relationship is a continual reminder to me of God's hand in my life and how he works through hard, painful, icky situations for His glory. My other close friend is Nat. She is one of the most Godly young women that I know and a role model for me in her walk with the Lord. She is constantly seeking Him and leaning on Him as she walks as a single woman (who would love to be married) with integrity and humility.

Even though a best friend for me has been a long time coming, it has almost been bittersweet. As I'm learning in a book-study group of Fresh Brewed Life, no human can fill up my longings. Even if I have the perfect girlfriend to hang out with, talk with, and minister with, it will never take the place that the longs for in my life. And I have to guard myself from jealousy all the time. Maybe it's just me, but even though I mightily rejoice when my friends have triumphs or good news, I struggle with discontent that it's happening to them and not to me. I don't have as much money as them, I don't have as good a marriage, etc. Even though I treasure these relationship, still they cause me to rely even more on the Lord and remind me that He is really the only one that can be my true best friend as well as the Awesome, Holy Father that I adore.