Why Friendship Matters

Just getting back to life after a 20 year reunion in Phoenix.  The long and the short of it is, it did not disappoint.

I had expected it to be fun, but I didn’t expect it to be so blessed.  It was healing, restorative, and an authentic experience of true friendship.  It was so much more than I imagined it would be.

Twenty years had passed since most of us had seen each other — and we picked up exactly where we had left off.  How does that happen?  Needless to say, it was a special time.

Here’s a quick peek at my time with these amazing ladies.

Fortunately, I managed to escape just hours before a crazy snow storm hit our hometown!  Thank you, Lord.

As an aside, as I rarely travel alone, I was taken back by how incredibly nice everybody was to me.  Take my flight attendants for instance: I was standing in the back of the plane stretching my legs and they filled my purse with little bottles of Tito’s vodka and told me to enjoy my weekend with the girls.

My only question is why don’t they do that when I’m traveling with my six kids? Anyway, it was really nice of them.

My friend, Stephanie, picked me up from the airport and we headed off for a citrus farm and some delicious brisket for lunch!

Then off to meet the amazing, Rebecca, who hooked us up with the sweetest little place for the weekend!

Then I went off to hang out with my beautiful cousin and her husband for the evening and some of the girls went off for an airport pickup.  From the video footage shared with me, I can attest to the fact that my friends are certifiable — and I mean that in the best way possible. 😉

My cousin and I have grown up together and even traveled to Phoenix together as kids, so it seemed another providential moment to reconnect with one amazing lady — a cousin, but also a wonderful friend!

My weekend got me thinking about the importance of friendship.  Honestly, I think it’s beautiful when I hear someone refer to their husbands or their kids as their best friends — but in my opinion, God wants us to seek out friendships with other women as well.

Don’t get me wrong. Absolutely your spouse and kids should be your primary relationships, and you should invest the bulk of your time in those relationships — but I think that God knows friendships have a way of restoring our soul and bringing a joy to our lives that can’t help but spill out onto the lives of our family.

Good friends don’t take away from those primary relationships — they actually help to build them up and keep them strong.

Yes, God satisfies all of our deepest desires, but I believe He leaves in us a desire for real, honest human interaction as well.  There’s something about relating and sharing with other women that can fill us up and spread joy to our families in a very powerful way.

Besides, having great friends can help propel you closer to Christ. The Saints were often friends with other Saints of their time. Who is to say that these Saints would ever have become Saints without their friends at their side?  Something to think about.

Friendships matter.  Taking time to develop friendships is a good thing, and working to repair friendships that may have hit bumps in the road is a very good thing as well.

After my reunion with some amazing ladies this past weekend I started thinking about what marks a true friendship.  If you have people in your life who fit this description, then you have found a treasure.

Marks of a True Friend

1. True friends don’t attack your vocation or make you second guess it.  They actually work to encourage you in it.
2. True friends build you up and encourage you as a person.
3. True friends are not afraid to challenge you if they think you might be straying into dangerous territory.   They actually love you enough to care what happens to you.
4. You can pray with a true friend.
5. You can laugh with a true friend.
6. You can cry with a true friend.
7. You can be yourself around a true friend.

I am grateful that I have friends right here in my own hometown that fit this description, but I can definitely say each of the women at that reunion fits this description as well.  I guess the God of abundance wanted to reintroduce me to some amazing women whom I could once again call my friends.

We have all lived a lot of life since we last met 20 years ago.  Coming back together and having the opportunity to catch up with these ladies and their lives was incredibly life-giving for all of us.

And here’s the thing:  if we had gathered with all of our kids, it would have been difficult to cover the ground that we covered.  If we had tried to do that via text or Facebook it just wouldn’t have been the same thing.

Those are great ways to keep in contact, but they just can’t replace the incredibly focused, human interactions we were blessed to have for an entire weekend.

And I can’t let this post go by, without giving props to the husbands who helped make this reunion possible.  We all married amazing men, and those men encouraged us to take off while they handled everything back home like champs — so yay for amazing, supportive husbands!

I think we all agree that we needed this time to be together — as women, as wives, as mothers — relating to each other in a way that was frankly far deeper than our college days.

It gave us time to rediscover some things about ourselves that maybe we had forgotten in all the craziness of life happening around us.

Our lives are a bit of a tapestry — people weaving in and out of our lives — but I believe God wants to teach us something through all the weaves and turns of our life.  God brings people in our lives that will help to influence the direction we will take, and if we’re lucky — okay, blessed —  some of those people will remain by our sides for much of our lives.

God is an amazing artist and if we allow Him to, He will form our lives into something truly beautiful.  To have spent time with these 6 women I knew so long ago and to see how they fit back into my life now is actually quite beautiful.  The Master at work.

By the way, do not underestimate the power of laughter.  I am not sure if I have ever laughed so much in a weekend. Honestly, it was crazy how much fun we had together.

We hiked and biked and ate good food and drank good drinks.  We prayed together and went to Mass and were reminded that being Catholic is not about being stuffy and serious all the time.

Sometimes it’s about letting loose and laughing hard and going deep and laughing some more.  So grateful for this faith that teaches there is truth in wine and music and people and laughter.

I also discovered that I have a cactus obsession.  Everywhere I went, I was taking pictures of cactus? cacti? cactuses? — whatever you want to call them, I’m kind of obsessed.  Here’s some of my favorites.

But enough of the cactus already.  So, what were some of the takeaways of the weekend?  I asked the ladies their takeaways and here’s a few of them:

We need to fight for the things that matter — like joy and and laughter and friendship.  Even when times are hard and you have serious illnesses you’re living with, you have to fight to find the joy and beauty in life.  It’s worth the fight!

Our husbands and kids will survive without us — and they’ll actually probably have an amazing time.  

We need to connect with other women and seek out true friendships.

Finding a true friend to walk this path with us is an amazing gift!

The Franciscan University of Steubenville is a special place that fosters some amazing friendships.  Shout out to our Alma Mater!

To be authentically Catholic is to be fun and joyful and not preachy or a stick in the mud.  It is to be authentically who we were created to be.

Some of us discovered we really don’t like any of the ladies who were present.  Wink.Wink. (Okay, this one was a bit of a joke — I think, right Maura?)

I think we all could agree that this last weekend reminded us that we need to stay awake, to not fall into survival mode but to look for the beauty in life — even in the hard stuff — and to see God’s hand working there.

God wants us to live and thrive and face this world head on — but He knows that we can’t do it alone.  We need family and we need friends, true friends to make it through this life.

So here’s my challenge to you: for the rest of Lent work to rediscover the beauty of the people around you.  Work to rediscover the beauty of your family and your friends.  Work to repair broken relationships that may have ended poorly.

Don’t hesitate.  Make it happen.  You won’t regret it.

“Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter;  whoever finds one has found a treasure.  Faithful friends are beyond price.  No amount can balance their worth.  Faithful friends are life-saving medicine;  and those who fear the Lord will find them”.

Sirach 6: 14-16

 

Sharing over at Kelly’s