True best friends could spend days together and never grow tired of each other. They enjoy each other’s company, and don’t want to experience something without the other. Best friends know each other well, feel each other’s pain and stand ready to defend the other from harm. A best friend is someone who you trust completely and share your true self with exclusively. If you are lucky you can refer to someone as “one of my best friends,” meaning you have many, and if you are truly lucky, one of your best friends will be your spouse.
It’s heartwarming to see these types of friendships develop in my children. Best friendships bring happiness, comfort, good times and lasting memories. These relationships can help you develop into the best you possible because your best friend knows and loves you for who you are. I believe that like good marriages, God blesses good friendships.
Children, of course, easily label best friendships, and it sometimes only takes a short time together to upgrade the friendship status to “best friends forever.” However, while many of those relationships stay at that status as quickly as they were formed, some relationships, even from childhood, are blessed enough to last a lifetime.
From my 34 years, I have a small list of names that I remember as being my true best friends through long stages of my life: Lauren, Celeste, Erinn, Laura, Stephanie and Kim. There are a couple of boys I would add to this list who I would label as best friends of mine through long stages of my life, but they get the ex-boyfriend label as well; so that trumps them for this story. And, after 15 years together – and more flare-ups, de-best-friending and re-best-friending than any other relationship in my life – I can honestly say that my deepest and most meaningful best friendship is with my husband, Joey. Finally, while I take it for granted that my sisters and my mom are also my best friends because they are my family, I know that it is not always that way in families in the world; so I acknowledge them here as well!
Of course, my lifetime is not nearly halfway over, if I have anything to do with it, and I’m forging ahead and experiencing relationships right now that I know will add names to my overall list. So, that is a very good thing.
Today, I clink my glass to best friendships – true blessings and imperative aspects of a joyful lifetime!
