Friends forever

I graduated from a Christian school in the mid 80’s. Stands to reason that Michael W. Smith’s “Friends are Friends Forever” was sung at my graduation.

I have a forever friend. (I have a couple, but for this instance, I’m going to only talk about one). I had several occasions recently to think about this friendship.

We are working out and talking about 80’s movies. When I get to pick workout music, we get 80’s music. Onto 80’s movies. Better Off Dead, Breakfast Club, and then I said one of Sheila’s in high school had been Weird Science. Marquis, shocked, says you’ve been friends since high school? I wish I had known you then. (He’s 24, kind of impossible…). Sheila says we’ve known each other since elementary school.

Then we are sitting together at Emily’s college volleyball game Saturday and I see a little old lady come in with a huge purse carrying her bottle of diet coke. I look at Sheila and say “that’s me in 30 years”. We had a good laugh. And she knows that she will be seeing me in 30 years.

Yesterday Sheila is at a funeral and I text her to see how she’s doing. I get “I like potatoes” as a response. Emily got her phone.

And I realize what a gift this friendship is. To this day we can say “you told me you were cutting your hairrrrr” and we would both laugh.

It’s not easy to maintain a friendship. It takes work. (Not that she’s hard to be friends with) Work in the sense that everyone is always so busy. Not me so much anymore, I can cancel most anything to free up time for what I want to do. I’m as busy as I choose to be. But it hasn’t always been that way. So staying friends with Sheila is important to me, and at this point in our lives is much easier. We aren't running together right now, and that's mostly a pride issue for me because I have to work so hard for every mile and don't want to affect her run or have her see me struggle that hard and witness the bad attitude that comes with it. But we work out together, and we stay in touch.

I was going to say community is important. And it is. BUT WE NEED OUR GIRLFRIENDS. So take a minute to let them know they are special to you. I’m going to.