August 15, 2007

•    Just after we'd gotten together for a visit over a
  leisurely lunch, a friend of mine once wrote me a note saying our talk
  was "refreshing... like taking a long, cool drink on a hot summer day."
     I
  knew exactly what she meant, because I had felt the same way about our
  hour or two of visiting together. I left the restaurant refreshed,
  rejuvenated, dust brushed off my spirits, and ready to go back into my
  life with a new polish on my outlook.
     For most of the women I'm
  close to -- and I'm talking about happily married women who have tight,
  loving relationships with their husbands -- strong friendships with
  other women are a vital ingredient in their recipe for a happy life. I
  know they're certainly necessary for my life to feel complete.
     I
  really think womenfolk are hardwired to need a female support system.
  Think about the way women have traditionally lived over human history --
  in close-knit family groups, surrounded by their mothers, grandmothers,
  sisters, daughters, aunts and cousins. While the men were out hunting
  or fishing or fighting battles, the women were often clustered back
  home, working together. Helping each other through pregnancy and
  childbirth. Grandmothers teaching younger women how to raise their
  children well. Planting and tending gardens. Cooking meals. And as they
  worked, they talked and shared their thoughts, their dreams, their
  problems, their fears, their hopes -- just like women are still doing
  every day, in dusty villages or gleaming office buildings, all around
  the globe.
     When women gather with friends, we smooth out the
  wrinkles in our lives. We tell each other funny things that have
  happened, but that's a level of conversation that's close to the
  surface. When we really get down into deeper levels of friendship, to a
  bedrock level of deep trust, we confide in each other our fears -- our
  fears that we might fail, our fears about our children. We confide the
  things that worry us, that keep us awake at night. We confess our
  weaknesses and our failings. We express our deep sorrows, and sometimes
  our words are seasoned with tears. We know we have a true friend when
  she wipes tears out of her own eyes when she hears about our sorrow, or
  when she is truly able to rejoice with us when joy bubbles up like an
  Ozarks spring in our lives.
     When we're in the process of casting on
  the stitches of a new friendship, we confide, and we listen -- a little
  bit here, a little bit there. And the garment grows, stitches are added -- first by one friend, then by the other, row by row, knitted together
  from the yarn of confidences exchanged, problems and hopes and dreams
  listened to, joys and sorrows shared, encouragement given, meals
  cooked, notes written, favors done, prayers offered. The garment of our
  friendship wraps around us like a warm sweater on a chilly day, making
  us feel better about ourselves and better equipped to handle whatever
  icy winds life blows our way.
     When something hard is going on in my
  life, I often feel compelled to let my closest friends know at least
  the gist of it. It makes heavy pain easier to bear when I share it with
  a friend. It turns the volume down when fear is screaming in my ears.
  And because every one of my closest women friends is a serious
  Christian, I know that each of them will pray for me and for whatever
  the situation is that is grieving me.          
    There have been times when I've
  felt their prayers and their love surrounding me like an armor of
  peace. And I hope I've done the same for them.
     I haven't always kept
  my friends close. During a long-ago season of killing frost in my life,
  a time of confusion and sorrow, I withdrew from my closest friends,
  keeping even my beloved sisters at arm's length for a time, and I
  withered and almost blew away without their strength and wisdom and
  support surrounding me. In withdrawing from my friends, I turned away
  from some of the primary conduits God uses to pour His love into my
  life, and I suffered for it. But my true friends remained steadfast,
  and continued to reach out until I was able to reach back again.
     Some
  friends, even true ones, are only in our lives for a season. I've had
  dear friends to whom I never talk any more, not because we've had any
  kind of falling out, but because our lives have taken such different
  turns that we just don't have anything but the bond of old times
  between us anymore.  
     But as one friendship fades out of my life,
  miraculously, another one appears on the horizon and grows bigger as
  time goes on, like a boat sailing into my harbor from a faraway shore.
  And sometimes old friendships that had faded away for years joyfully
  reappear and become even more valued.
     "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights."
     The friendship of women is, at its truest and best, one of those good and perfect gifts.
  
  By Celia DeWoody
  Published Aug. 15, 2007, Harrison Daily Times
  Copyright CPI, Inc., 2007
  

  • 7:49 pm
  • 5 Comments