This is the heartbeat of celebrating friendship. Rejoicing, honoring, applauding, commending, saluting, toasting the wonderful people in our lives. Not for what they do, but for who they are, and for what they mean to us. "Thank you for being you." Throwing parties over friendship. Not just once a year on a birthday, but as often as we can. Parties in our souls. Gratitude. Celebrating life, the fresh new kind, in a fresh new way, every moment. In friendship, I confess, I am learning from the best. I didn't discover celebrating on my own. I learned from my four close friends. in my life: Mary, Jennifer, Maria and Lori. They are my best mates of the first order and celebrators extraordinaire. Friendship is "caught," not "taught," and everything I know, I have "caught" from them. It is with pleasure to say they fill a role in my life that no one else can. That's what girlfriends do.
Husbands do not make good girlfriends. Mine is terrific, but he simply doesn't care about the fabric that I like for the curtains. Actually, he does care about the one fabric I like, just not the twenty-four hundred I had to eliminate before I could find the one. That's what friends are for. He doesn't want to know what I think about what everyone is wearing to the Academy Awards. But my girlfriends do. He couldn't care less about the cool chair I found for sale at the auction, but I will be in big trouble if I don't call Lori.
Boyfriends don't make good girlfriends. Sounds a bit obvious, doesn't it? But how many of us still try to push the men in our lives into a spot reserved for girlfriends? Don't get me wrong, I have guy-friends, and your husband or your boyfriend should also be a friend, but I'm talking about celebrating the unique role that close females friends play in our lives.
Girlfriends bring out so much in us that no man ever could. They understand us, they cry with us, they shop with us, laugh-'til-we-pee with us...no man does that! We are sisters who speak the same language, like the same movies, have similar dreams and goals, and eat more than we should. Viva la friendship! Proximity? Not necessary.
What determines friendship? Some of the women we see every day we would no sooner call our friends than fly to the moon. Then there are other women that we have met one time but wouldn't call them anything less than a friend. You would think someone who has let you down and hurt your feelings wouldn't make a very good friend. But most of our closest friends have done that. We can all think of people who have never wounded us or disappointed us in any way, and yet we don't necessarily want them for a friend.
So, what determines friendships? Something intangible, that won't be defined. Something inside clicks. Something in our soul responds like a flower opening to the sun. We can't specify it ahead of time, but we know it when we feel it. Friendship is a mystery. The solving of the mystery is impossible. When you ask lifelong friends why they are friends, they can't explain it. "We just are." Then they smile.
If you have one close friend, consider yourself blessed of God. If you have two friends, stand up right now and sing the doxology! If you don't have one person in your life that you could call a backbone, lifelong friend, it could mean you just haven't made a place in your life for a soul mate friend.
Next post I'll talk about where to find those soul mates. Until then, get ready to celebrate.
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