Friends

Sometimes I think about what I have done in life. I haven’t really accomplished much - but this I have done: I have made friends.

My friends are my treasures. I am really grateful for them.  I know that with a friend I am just me: i don’t have to try to be smarter or more competent than I am, or have things figured out.  I know that they like me. They get me. I liken it to sending off sparks: I send out these sparks - ideas, thoughts, intuitive leaps … and my friends catch them and send them back instead of extinguishing them. One of my friends even made me a sweatshirt with sparks embroidered on it …. That’s how much she got me.

And I don’t have to put on the right face for my friends. Through some really dark, despairing times, my friends stayed in it with me, even when I was inconsolable.  It’s a hard place to be, staying with someone when there is absolutely nothing you can do or say. When I couldn’t see God at all - I saw them, there with me.  

Today a friend (oh, such a treasured friend!) shared something about Moses and Abraham being friends of God “The Lord used to speak to Abraham face to face as a man speaks to his friend.” And one of my favorite verses, John 15:  “I have called you friends, because everything the Father has made known to me, I have made known to you.”  I like that!  Jesus sending out sparks. Telling us what is really important to him. Inviting us to be in it with him.

I want to envision God more like a friend.  Sometimes I get so messed up with expectations (you are GOD, so FIX this!) or being afraid of disapproval (still!) or looking for “intimacy”.  (OK, I admit it right now, I don’t think I get what “intimacy” with God even means!)  But friends… I do get that. I can be friends.