The crucible of friendship
Unpopular opinion: Friendship is hard. Like, really hard.
I always had this expectation growing up that friendship, with age, would get easier. Like, one day in my adult years, I would reach this place where I could still reap all of the joy outputs of friendship, without having to feed it the same inputs: time, energy, resources.
It turns out, that is indeed a fantasy.
And I guess, for all intents and purposes, I’m now willing to own and admit that it probably should remain just a fantasy.
Because real, sacrificial, big-input friendships are worth their salt.
They’re worth it in the early years, they’re worth it in the middle years, and they’ll continue to be worth it when we’re old and gray.
Over the weekend my mom’s friends surprised her with a 60th birthday “tour” that reminded me of this truth. It was the perfect, most customized-to-her-personality-ever, celebration of her life.
They started out by surprising her with brunch at one of their houses: coconut donuts (her favorite) and mimosas.
Then they traveled to the next friends house where a Tex-Mex party was awaiting: dips, margaritas, a piñata, and lots of sillies.
Then they traveled to yet another friends house where a Beach-themed party was awaiting (and her favorite sub from the Olde Corner Deli + a surprise visit from my grandma, her mama, were also waiting).
Then they surprised her with a visit to the bar in town where they meet every Tuesday night for Taco Tuesday, faithfully for actual decades now.
Finally, they surprised her at her own house, where one of the friends had arrived earlier in the day to clean and decorate and set up a Flamingo-style, pajama party. My mom, always & forever, has said things to this tune (you’ll giggle if you know her because you’ve definitely heard this before): “I like to be at home, in my pajamas, by 8:00 sharp.” So, wouldn’t you know that the last stop (where Javi, Andy, Amanda & I were waiting) was a matching flamingo PJ party on her couch with pizza, wings, beer, and presents.
I could say so many more things about this day that they so perfectly arranged for her, but I think, the thing that made me teary-eyed in the moment and might still make me well up again now as I’m writing this, isn’t actually related at all to the customization of details or the party arrangements…. Rather, it’s the romance (if you’ll allow me to use that word here) of this friendship. It’s these seven women who have shown up for each other in so many different seasons and who keep choosing each other, despite all the changes and the messes and the misspoken words and all the things in between. They keep on celebrating each other, they keep on forgiving each other, and they keep on loving each other.
These are the women who taught me how to dance on the table when I was 9 (careful not to take that out of context). These are the women who sat in our garage and indulged my friends and I’s renditions of our own Spice Girls concerts (which I imagine were actually very difficult to indulge). These are the women whose houses I slept at when my dad was losing his fight to alcoholism. These are the women who held my mama’s hands as we lost him and she learned to live life again as a widow. These are the women who showered me at every intersection of weddings and babies. These are the women who called air ambulance companies relentlessly to find our Lily a flight to medical care in the U.S. These are the women who will walk with my mom into this next season of her life as she retires at the end of this month. These are the women who have taught me about friendship: that it is true, that it is forgiving, that it shows up in all the weird and traumatic places, and that it, week after week, and year after year, and decade after decade, requires the kind of care and inputs that help it to mature and grow and adapt to new seasons and incarnations of love.
These are the women who have taught me that the sacrifices required of friendship are worth it.
As I settle into my mid-30’s (no- I am not sure how I got here either), I am now looking ahead to the ones that have gone before me (like my mama and these friends) to pave the way for me in the demonstration of friendship, and I’m also now looking behind me to my own little ones to instill in them these same values - to teach them that above and beyond all the things that that they learn in school, I hope that they learn best how to be a friend.
What I didn’t know once… that I do know now… is that it is in the trenches of relationship where I receive Christ and make Him known best. It is in the trenches of relationship where I come face-to-face with grace and love. It is where I become grace and love.
For all my pursuits in missions and outreach, I’ll share with you this unpopular opinion that friendship is the crucible from which these good things can actually become best-shape things.
My efforts, if not deeply centered in accountable relationships that are furthering Christ’s own refining of me into His image, will be rooted in vanity, in ego, and in control, from which only poor things can grow.
But if, instead, I surrender to the humility and hilarity and rootedness and down-right awkwardness of committed relationships, what grows from me will then reflect the humility of the King who tied-Himself to others for a yield much higher.
In my building… and in your building too, friend who is reading this, may we be architects surrendered to others. Not for utilitarian purposes: but rather, for the journey - for the inputs, for the outputs, and for the encounters with the One who finds us and meets with us in the presence of others.