When you need a friend

A long-time friend posted on my Facebook page yesterday about making and keeping friends. The message said:

“It’s easy to make 15 friends in one year.

But keeping one friend for 15 years is special.”

I had to agree, because this person has been my friend since senior public and high school days, when our small rural schools closed and we were collected by bus and on our way to another bigger school. In a time like that, we are forced to move beyond our comfortable places. My friends from School Section (commonly known as S. S.) # 8 came too. We made new friends and kept the former ones too. And there were friends along the way at church in my Sunday School class and in our church in the city who have become just as dear.

East coast friend Maryann

 Barbara

Sunday School and confirmation-- friends there too

We recently had opportunity to gather with these long-time friends, for Linda’s partner became a friend of ours too. With us, another friend, Lorraine, gathered into our midst at a different point in our lives, in career choices and university years (for them).

Lorraine travelled with us to visit Linda and Bob in Port Dover, their retirement community. Another couple, Donna and Ron, also represent a friendship made during high school years, so you can imagine the conversations that might make its way into our gathering. 

in Port Dover

I’ve learned over the years the difference between an acquaintance and a close friend. I have many acquaintances, people I know reasonably well. Then the life-long friends, or other friends made later and just as dear, who care about how I’m doing, who have interests similar to mine. Those are the ones I share with when the world feels uncomfortable, when things happen that make me sad. Those are the ones who I go to when my world feels like it’s falling apart, and whom I also lend an ear when they suffer a life calamity or death of a loved one. We celebrate too, and often finish each other’s sentences and thoughts.

 

Missing Kathy too

It’s painful to lose a friend like that, and I’ve lost a number of them over the years— Barb, Susan, Gayleen, Kathy, and more. The other half of a personal journey, the second part of a soul sister. It’s good when a sibling, daughter, or a cousin fits in that space too, and I add a few of those to my consideration of soul sisters and friends (including male cousins).

In Sunday School we sang, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” and we learned that Jesus wants to be our friend too. A different kind of friendship, to be sure, because grace and mercy are at stake. And forgiveness. We might try, but we humans don’t forgive as freely as God does. I know I am forgiven, and often the hardest to forgive is myself. My friends may forgive me, but God’s grace is so much bigger and eternal.

 

I cannot imagine going through life without friends. How lonely it must be. We as humans will never perfect, in fact far from it. And yet in our communities there’s still loneliness and lack of trust, and pain. And we feel it too at times. We need grace and forgiveness. As Leonard Cohen says in Anthem, “There’s a crack in everything.” And he expresses that’s where the light gets in.

And so I’ll keep all my friends—acquaintances, soul sisters and close friends, siblings and cousins whom I can confide in, and Jesus. That should keep me in good company whatever happens in life.

 Carolyn R. Wilker is a blogger, author, and editor from South-western Ontario, Canada, who enjoys photography, gardening and reading, and spending time with family.

 https://www.carolynwilker.ca/