Five blessings of friendship

When I look back over my life, it's not the things I've done or the places I've been that are most memorable, it's the people I've known.  “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” Anais Nin.

I recently caught up with a friend who came to visit me the week I was born. We grew up together, then our families grew up together and we relive a lifetime of memories built around blackberry picking, prawning, bonfire nights and so much more. We remember mishaps and misadventures and can laugh about them now, in hindsight.

To have a rich and enduing friendship is to have one of the most precious gifts in life. If you have one true friend you are indeed blessed. 

Friendship seems to have become one of those overused words, in danger of losing it's meaning. Social media has minimised friendship to mere connections, and encouraged quantity not quality. While we might follow friends on Facebook, friendship will only ever grow through personal interaction ... spending time together ... investing in each other's lives.

Who can put a price on the gift of friendship, it is priceless.

• A friend is a witness to my life. Someone who has been on the journey of life with me, has believed in me and valued who I am ... who can remind me how far I've come. Someone with whom I can share my innermost thoughts and struggles and not be judged ... who shares my joys and successes and gets excited with me. Someone who truly knows and accepts me.

 

• True friends have been a mirror to me, enabling me to see myself through another person's eyes. They encourage me to be my best self and discourage me from the things that make me less than I can be. 

 

• Friendship is unmerited grace. It's a commitment to continually turning up and being there for the other person, through thick and then. Its about continual tolerance, mercy and forgiveness.

 

• A friendship is a commitment of two people to invest in the relationship. There is no such thing as a nonreciprocal friendship. It's a mutual giving and receiving, which is both health giving and nourishing. It keeps you looking out beyond yourself. 

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• Unlike our relatives, friendship is a choice.  We are in it because we want to be. And the choice continues, the more I invest into the friendship, the deeper it grows. "Friendship is a slow ripening fruit" - Aristotle.​

I’m not only blessed to have had some amazing friends throughout my life but I’ve had the honour to be a friend. I’ve been privileged to share both heartache and victories and to be trusted with innermost thoughts and dreams. 

I treasure the tangible reminders of friends ... recipes shared and marked with their name in my recipe book; Molly's fruit cake and Shirley's Strawberry Mousse ... in plants swapped and now blooming in my garden ... in books given with names engraved on the flyleaf. They are happy reminders of rich times together over the years ... of lifelong friends and those just given for a season.

We leave an imprint on someone's life through the gift of our friendship.