Three years ago, I was scheduled to move to San Antonio, TX. My job was transferring there, from Maryland and for reasons not worth re-visiting, I elected not to go. I had a friend, though, I’d known casually for several years who was from San Antonio and like me, was working in the DC area at the time. I called her and asked her if she was interested in going back to San Antonio. The answer was a resounding YES! Like many of us, she had come to DC not because she wanted to, but to further her career and experience. Within a matter of days, I coordinated an interview between her and my boss and a short time later, she was home in Texas.
Within a year, my friend met and married her husband. They’ve now been married for just over a year and they’re expecting their first baby. Several months after she returned to San Antonio, I moved to California and just over a year after that, I moved back to Maryland. We’ve diligently kept in touch this whole time and I can honestly say we are closer now then we’ve ever been.
Our lives are busy but we connect when we can – a training for work, requested specifically because it would send me to San Antonio (and of course, because I actually *needed* the training, lol). Or, primarily email updates on Fridays, filling each other in on our week and plans for the weekend. Occasionally we’re able to take advantage of “slow days” and email back and forth throughout the day. Last week’s emails consisted of me voting on the nursery theme for her baby and this week was the first song I’ll play at my wedding.
Ten years ago I started my first Federal job with a woman who had just moved to Washington state from Utah. Her two younger daughters were in school and making friends, but her oldest daughter had already graduated and chosen to move with the family, but hadn’t made many acquaintances yet. Being a local to the area, I started hanging out with her daughter and we became close. For reasons not worth re-visiting now, we fell out of sorts for some time, but managed to reconnect a short time before I moved to Maryland – the first time. Since then, we keep in touch by consistent “drive bys” on Facebook. When her job sends her to DC for work, or when I go back to Washington to visit, we make getting together to catch up a priority.
My friend is single, loves to travel and has worked her way into a good paying job. When she accepted Christ, I was one of the first people she told. When we’re together, we’re usually in pain because we laugh so hard. We’ve decided it’s time for both of us to travel more and have begun planning our first vacation together this winter.
Two years ago, all I knew was that I needed prayer – bad!! I made my way to the front of the church and into the arms of a waiting couple. I sniveled and hiccupped my heartbreak and they embraced me and we prayed. I exchanged email addresses with the wife and went on my miserable, clouded way. A short time later came the first of what would become thousands of emails.
My friend is active in her church and a stay at home mom who home schools her four kids. She doesn’t have loads of time to roam the mall aimlessly and she can’t regularly get away to do lunch or get a pedicure. Shortly after our one initial encounter, I packed up my toys and moved to California. We emailed every single day – sometimes multiple times a day. I didn’t see her again for eight months, when I returned to Maryland for a visit. I was ecstatic to see someone I’d met once – and NOT in my finest hour – but considered a very dear friend. When I moved back to Maryland in July, it was this friend who showed me where my post office was, how to get to the Costco, who counter-balanced the “crazy” in my church and who I still call when I’m lost. Her family has taken me in and made me one of their own.
Seven months ago, I signed up for an Anger Management class at my church. The class was fascinating, I learned a lot and I also made a friend. We share the same dry, sarcastic sense of humor and often stood outside in the cold after class to keep talking, or gave each other the giggles while our teacher led us in breathing exercises in class. My friend is real and transparent and I love it. I know I can tell her anything and she will at least understand and at most, relate. Living in Virginia, we don’t have the opportunities to get together as often as we would like, but when we do, we can spend an entire day together without realizing the time has passed.
As I travel though life, as I’m frustrated and encouraged, hurt and blessed, I’m thankful for my friends. I’m awed daily by them – by how many I have, and how much they love me. By how different they are and how quickly my years with them have flown by. The one who called my job and pretended to be my mom when she got worried when I wouldn’t pick up the phone. The one who used to call and leave long rambling voicemails “venting” – and if I’d make the mistake of picking up, she’d politely request to call me back and ask me to send her to voicemail, please. The friend who is the ying to my yang who would allow me to drag her along on whatever adventure I could think of. The friends who thoroughly investigated the two churches I was struggling with, from 3,000 miles away, so they could give me the advice I’d asked for. My friends surround me like the flowers in a bouquet, but they are in fact scattered across the globe.
Something I’ve been reminded of lately, is that friendship – the comfortable kind, that fits like an old pair of house shoes – takes time. But also – like love – it comes out of the blue, when you’re not really looking for it.
LOVE y’all!!
~M~
