Friends

Looking at old photos and thinking of old friends brings a smile to my face, and a tear to my eyes. There are some friendships that last a lifetime, yet there are those that survive only a short season. Friends that I played together with from dawn to dusk. My three good friends with whom I walked to school for four years…I wonder what became of them. Those friends that I stood shoulder to shoulder with in the sun, in our shinny boots and green army fatigues…did they ever get married and have a family? My good friends whom I spent a year with in a foreign land on a special mission…we made do with a food budget meant for street people, but we emerged with a greater faith in God’s providence. How about my many friends that I’ve made since emigrating half-way around the world? The greatest achievements in my life I share with these ones.

The brief time spent together in adventure and adversity with some of these friends, are forever etched into my memory. I cannot turn the clock back…but I wouldn’t trade it for the world either!
Passing the half century mark in life, I look back at the many nameless faces that were once friends. Names forgotten through time, but their influence irrevocably stamped into my temperament, my gifts, my experiences and who I am today. Old friends grow old together! True friends stick through thick and thin; they love you even more as they discover more of your humanness and frailty.
It survives misunderstandings, disagreements, let downs, and always hopes the best for the other.
Alas, there will be those friends you hold dear to your heart, those you have invested much, and those you are willing to lay down your life for that will inevitably abandon you along the road of life.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. Martin Luther King Jr. Some days my heart aches for these friends from the past…Time to move on again!