Good Friends: What Would We Do Without Them?

Friends are the next best thing to family--actually better in some instances! I don't mean that badly. I just mean that if you marry into a family, for example, you can't spout off to your mother-in-law how much of a jerk her son or daughter can be sometimes, or about problems of a more intimate nature. (well, okay, you can, but at considerable risk to the in-law relationship!) I just mean, your good friends in general, those who have stood by you through thick and thin, hell and high water, never judging you, and sticking by you for moral support no matter what--those are the people who make life more livable, more fun, and just plain more enjoyable. I don't know what I would have done through the years without my friends, and I'd like to believe they have the same feelings for me. I am not one to pat myself on the back, and that is not what this hub is about.


This article is about the true awesomeness of true blue friends, those who are like brothers and sisters to each of us, yet we share no blood. Can you think of the friend in your life who has been by your side through it all, even from hundreds of miles away? That person who gets a feeling one day and calls up and says "Is everything okay? I just had the strangest feeling and I had to call and make sure you were alright!" Does your face not break into a smile when you picture that person? Just hearing their name lifts your spirit some. I would call my friends angels, except they would probably tell me that I'm on drugs and that they are far from being angels. But they are angels to me. Are angels not the beings God sends us sometimes to help us through our tough times? Do we not see evidence in our lives at different times of angels at work? Honestly, even you non-believers out there must have at least one time where it seemed something "magical" happened. I know I have. I believe good friends are like those mystical beings in that they can lift our hearts for us when they seem too heavy to bear ourselves. They can be the shoulder we cry on, the ear that hears about our problems and lets us get it all out so we can work through whatever it is.


I don't know about any of you, but I feel so much more joyful and more serene when I think of my best friends--both of whom are distant from me to the north and far to the west, living their lives while here I am living mine--but always no more than a hairsbreadth away. We have connections that reach way back in our lives--32 and 40 years back into our childhoods, and the links have never severed. My children's ideas on friends and what a good friend is are very different from what has always been true for me. Though their views do change every day with more little gadgets and doohickeys being made available to connect with the people we know both near and far.


Have you told your good friends how you feel about them lately? If you haven't, what are you waiting for!? Don't take the fact of their existence for granted. Life is too short not to let those we love know that we are thinking of them always.