To My Friends

I love my friends.  I hope you ALL know who you are.  If you are reading this via Facebook, then, by all means, you ARE my friend.  Friendship, to me, is so important, and entails many different aspects.  I just came home from a wonderful trip to Arizona, to visit some long time friends; friendships that were formed 20 years ago as a freshman in college.  I can't believe it's been that long, yet we still keep in touch, and as one of them said to me after I came back home...."we can pick up right where we left off", even if it has been 9 years.  

While I was away in Arizona, and since I've been back, I've spent a lot of time pondering on why friendship is so important to me, and what it is, exactly, that binds us closely to one another. (Although, John does not understand why a woman needs a break every now and then, just to be with "friends" to reconnect, and be refreshed and remotivated..... still working on that one with him).  Yet, that is the difference between he and I. He wonders how I can talk on the phone with a friend for hours, when it is so easy for him, as he says, to just say what you need to say and hang up.  Or why I need 5 days to visit with friends, instead of two.  Maybe this is the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing? Never read the book, so not sure.  But I've come to realize that men just don't need friends in the same way women do I suppose.  (But let me just say, John really is my best friend, and he would always tell people in our early married life, that we were best friends first before we fell in love). Okay, enough of the sappy stuff, back to my friends.

My friends have been with me through thick and thin; through the most trying times of my life, and through the most joyous as well.  I hope that I have been the kind of friend to others, as they/you have been to me.  One thing I love about you all, are the qualities that I want to emulate that I find in you!   

• I see the friend who drops everything to help me in a pinch.  I want to be more like that.  
• I see the friend who has never said a negative word about another person. I NEED to be more like that. 
• I see the friend who is so talented, been blessed with many gifts, but is so humble in every way.  I sure could use a lesson in that.  
• I see the friend who is positive in all situations.  That is an area I certainly could improve upon.  
• I see the friend who doesn't compare herself with others, is comfortable in her own skin.  I could use a little help there too.  
• I see the friend who just listens, doesn't judge, and somehow, that's all I need.  That is someone I want to be more like.  
• I see the friend who has mourned with me; felt my pain just as much as me, and the friend who is just as happy as I, when I am happy too.  That is the kind of friend I want to be.  

 "Do not save your loving speeches

For your friends till they are dead;
Do not write them on their tombstones,
Speak them rather now instead."
- Anna Cummins 

I hope you all know how very much you mean to me. It is the friendships which I share with you all (as well as my family) that have shaped who I am.  As Walt Whitman has said, I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.  

So, if you are in need of refreshment in your life, I suggest you take a trip, visit that old chum that means a lot to you. If a vacation is not on the itinerary, then take a trip down memory lane and think about the many friendships you have made over the years, and think about the one's you have now and just remember this, A good friend is hard to find, hard to lose, and impossible to forget (author unknown).