The Best Things a Girl Can Have

This afternoon my older sister showed me a ring that her best friend gave her.  It was a cool ring.  Engraved on it was the phrase: Friends are the family you get to choose.

On my drive home I thought about that…it was a long drive.

Friends are really like family.  There are some ways that are different but a real friend, a true deep friendship is like family-you can’t get rid of them! :)  I can think of a number of women in my life who I count on like family and I know that I’ve blogged about the awesomeness of my friends in previous posts but I would just like to reiterate their value.

A good friend is like everything I love in this life.  They’re a cozy coffee shop, an overstuffed chair, an amazing meal, a great book, they are accomplishment and small talk, a good friend is priceless (oh yea she went there….cheesy cliche sappiness).  I also think a good friend is sometimes a person that you find when you least expect them to pop up or best of all when you’re not trying to make friends.

I remember going into my freshman year of college thinking to myself, “Self, you are going to meet tons of new people and you are going to make them be your friends!”  Well, maybe I didn’t think I was going to make them be my friends, but I knew that I was going to seek out friendships.  I would say however, that’s not how it happened.  My best friends, the ones I call when I have big news or need support or just can’t sleep, are people who were placed in my path.  They are people I did life with, they were not people who I shopped for.  I think this is the reason why such good friendships develop.  Often times venerability, conversations, silliness, tears, challenges, celebrations and all of the other things that make a friendship real and deep happen organically in everyday situations, they can’t be scheduled.

When I first moved to Clarinda I helped with a small group and I remember wanting so badly to find people I could invest in and start these deep relationships with.  I failed.  Everything felt so forced and rigid.  I think this is probably because I didn’t give us a chance to get to know each other by just doing life together, it’s like a good wine…it takes time!

Of course speaking of best friends I have to mention my sister, we’ve put in some quality years together.  And, it just so happens that this weekend my baby sister turned 21 (today actually, you should wish her happy birthday!).  It’s a weird feeling first of all because it doesn’t seem like she or I for that matter should be this old, but secondly because she does seem that old.  Maggie, don’t take this the wrong way, you are still a child in all the best ways and you are still my little sister no matter how old you get, but you are so grown up.  You are mature and you are making decisions for your self and you are in love with and awesome guy and I’m so proud of the life you are making for yourself, you are grown up and I admire the woman you’ve become (this might be a post for another time) .

I got to go down and celebrate with Maggie this weekend (don’t worry it only got slightly out of hand :) ) and it just so happened that one of our best friends came too (Her name is also Anna and her Mag and I were all best friends in high school…kinda neat).  There was a moment this weekend when Anna and I were in the backseat and we were goofing around and Maggie looked back and said, “Hey Bert and Ernie back there…knock it off!”  It was perfect because it was hilarious but also, this is the perfect picture of our high school experience and the best part was when Maggie looked back at both Anna and I and all three of us laughed because we all knew just how much we all missed moments like that.

It’s realizations like that the make me think doing life together creates something so much more of a bond than scheduling friendships.

It is so obvious to me that we were made to live in community and encourage and rely on one another.  I’m grateful for this design and for the blessing of knowing 'big breakfast mornings’, 'belly laugh afternoons' and 'box of tissues' nights with my best friends.

This post goes out to all my girls (Mom, Mag, Sarah, Chels, Anna, Kris, Randa, Al, Bobbie, Heidi, BO, Lindsey, Jess, Hil, Jan, Andrea, and Oh so many more….), thanks for all your ewwwey goooeeey goodnessss!!!

I really hope you have at least one friendship that is brought to mind while you are reading this, if not…maybe we should go get some coffee.?.?