I think friendship is so important. But friendship is also so incredibly weird... We basically pick a human, internally decide that we like them, and then proceed to do things with them. I don't know about you, but I enjoy being around other people. I like sitting in silence with my best friend as we scroll through our separate Pinterest boards while Friends plays in the background. I enjoy simply knowing that someone else is in the room, but also that we can be mutually comfortable in our silence. But I also have come to realize that these friendships are not handed to you. You don't (usually) meet someone, immediately break out the super glue and attache at the hip
So the next time you find yourself questioning how much you want to let someone in ask yourself just how much of your life you would like to let them in on.
Get yourself the kind of friends that will take care of you when you’ve had too much to drink, and will pray with you when your heart is shattered. Find friends that will be next to you in the library studying or watching movies with you until three in the morning. Find people who you can share the deepest darkest pieces of your soul with, as well as your favorite YouTube videos. Because the whole “school friends,” “work friends,” “church friends” thing gets old. And to be quite frank, is BS. Why must we classify our friendships when we can simply call them friends?
I often joke that the best kind of boat is a friend-ship. And I mean it. I am not referring to some pathetic little dinghy, that’s taking on water, but rather a strong and mysterious yacht. A boat where your granddad can teach you to fish off of one end, and your dad can try and throw you and your friends off the tube pulling behind the other end.
The best kind of tools in life are things that we can use for many things. Look at our phones for example, we used to be able to make calls. That was it. Now we can navigate, pay all our bills, track our fitness and finances, take videos, pictures and notes, surf the internet and thousands of apps as well as making phone calls and sending text messages. Knowing how they work and that we can have phones that can do all these advanced things, why would one choose the simple one?
The same thing goes for our friendships! Why would you choose the friend that you have one thing in common with when you can have the kind of fiends that you could talk to forever? I want deep and challenging friendships. I want people in my life that I can be in tears laughing with one minute, and in deep theological debate with them the next minute. The kind of people that could hold a conversation with my parents and my baby cousins in the same way. And ultimately, I want the people in my life that can call me out on my crap, tell me when I need to kick it into gear, and forevie me when I eventually mess up because they realize that we are all human.
I’m tired of settling for second rate friendships that never get past the surface level and I think that it’s time we all reevaluate, are my friends the kind of people that are the yacht? Or the dinghy?
