The Power of Friendship

I think sometimes friendship is under-rated.  Maybe it’s because we have cheapened it, the way we did marriage and parenting, to where it’s a watered down version of the fellowship God designed…

… Much like the Fellowship in Lord of The Rings, it was originally written out to be a powerful group of different individuals working together and holding each other up.  Friends are supposed to help you the way Sam helped Frodo even when Frodo was too weak to help himself.  It’s the stuff legends are written out of, like the friendship between C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien which led Tolkien to Christ and to write about friendships that mirrored his own.  It’s the appeal in movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Avengers, and The Justice League – a truth we seek out today more than romance because we don’t want someone to take us to bed as much as we crave for someone to take us for a drink and listen to us for a while…

Now it’s a place of gossip and platitudes, of putting on a fake smile and a fake appearance like our make up and just doing everything to be as put together as the person next to you so you won’t be humiliated.

I’m so blessed that God has shown me what true friends are.

It’s a church, but it’s not a denomination or an address.  It’s a family but we’re not related by blood. It’s sisterhood not because we have the same earthly parents, but because we have been adopted by the same Heavenly Father.

My friends attend different churches across the Anchorage area… and the Midwest of the USA… And the East Coast.  Some of us have many children and some of us have pets instead.  Some are married and some have been divorced, and still some are somewhere in between.

My closer friends held me up when I didn’t have the strength to walk, much like when Moses was held up by both arms in the battle where the scorching sun never seemed to set.

They brought our family dinner when I had no appetite to eat.  They gave our family opportunities to create wonderful memories when I didn’t feel a reason to get out of bed.  They stocked my cupboards with groceries when I had no money to buy food.  They provide a place for us to live when we were homeless and completely lost in what to do next.

I’m not even referring to the span of my lifetime.  I’m talking about the past year.  Even more specifically the past two weeks!

Don’t ever underestimate the power you have to lift someone up.  Don’t ever think that you couldn’t be that one voice that says, “You’re going to make it!”  Don’t think for one moment that a hot plate or even a hot cup of coffee with a hug and a smile won’t make a difference in someone else’s life because I’m alive today to tell you that it does.