Good friends

It's good to have friends.

I'm reminded of this because I spent a few moments this morning chatting with my good friend Kate (Hi, Kate! Are you reading this?). What we talked about isn't important (meaning only that it isn't central to the point I'm making - it was an important conversation to me). What is important is that when she signed off, I was just overwhelmingly grateful that God has given me these friends.

These are people with whom I can be totally honest and vulnerable, who know me and all my weird quirks and inconsistencies. I've laughed with them and cried with them, and when I'm convinced that I am completely screwed-up, they still stick around. They're there when I need them and when I don't.

What I can't figure out is how I managed to live so long without them in my life. I spent too many years being too insecure to let down my guard, at least completely. Now, having done so repeatedly, and finding them still there at the end of the whole mess, I'm amazed that I didn't just have nervous breakdowns all the time.

Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort, of feeling safe with a person, having to neither weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out - chaff and grain together - certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and, with the breath of kindess, blow the rest away.
- Dinah Mulock, "Friendship"