January 24, 2006
Friendster
Once a month my friends Catherine, Kim, Mary Lee and I meet for sushi at our favorite little place in Virginia-Highlands. It started out as "Sushi Tuesdays," but that had to shift a bit due to schedules and the fact that Mary Lee now has tap class every Tuesday night. Yes, tap class.
Kim and I went to Miami together, and Catherine and Mary Lee went to college together, and the three of them used to work together. (Which is how I met them to begin with.) Two of us are single and two of us are married, which means we always have plenty to talk about. More often than not our conversations revolve around college and earrings and husbands and boys, as most girltalk will, but because we're women we can say things without saying them.
I look forward to our sushi meet-ups for more than the soy or the Super Crunch - I look forward to them because they help keep me sane. When you have touchstones, a place to come back to when your life feels distant and whirling, it makes all the hard stuff survivable. When you have friends who love you, unconditionally, simply because of who you are, it's freeing. I would like to think that I am that kind of friend - the kind who gives because it's what is commanded of me, not because of what is returned.
The older I get, the more I learn about who Jesus really was, the more I feel a greater urge to return the kind of friendship that has been so lavished on me my entire life. It's easy loving people who listen to you, care about you and want the best for you. It's harder to love people who want to tear you down or see you fail or use you for their own pleasure or success. So I try to look past the crazy or the mean or the wicked actions to see what role I played in all of that; to fix cracks I may have caused; to love, as Jesus so simply put it, my enemies. Not because I want to keep them close in order to trip them up or turn the tables or make them "pay." But because it is what was asked of me. Because I have been given to so freely and given so much. Because being a friend to my enemies honors the people who have befriended me, and of course, it honors Him. There's no better, no other, reason than that.
Posted by hannah at 12:16 PM
