Strategic friendships

"I feel a blog coming on."

I spoke these words as I came back from changing my 2 1/2 year old's diaper.  His third..... in 30 minutes.  Yes.... all number two's.  Yes..... in a busy restaurant.  No.... we did not have any extra diapers.

Between change number two and change number three...which took all of about 3 minutes, I was reminded by a good friend at the table that the exact same thing had happened the last time we got together for dinner which was over a year ago.  (Oh my God, who would want to go out to dinner with us after that episode?  Those are the stories you use in your "who has the worst friends' game!)  Some things never change.

Like good friends.  They are timeless.  They are a pillar of salt.  They are what is absolutely needed to get us through life.

By "good" friends I am not pointing direction to those who have deep friendships or ones that have spanned the decades.  Good friends are the ones whose feathers do not get easily ruffled...they are slow to anger...quick to forgive and abound in love.

(Hey, that sounds a lot like Psalm 145:8!)

Well, no wonder...these are the friendships that God loves.  He protects them fiercely for you and I because he too knows that we need them.

Our lives were filled with some of those friends last week and we hauled the entire family back to the Chicago area for our spring break vacation.  We didn't really plan on visiting Chicago so quickly...in fact...I'll never forget being in the delivery room of a friend as she delivered her second son and when I hugged her goodbye, it was with the potential of "forever" as our moving truck was pulling out just 48 hours later.  When we relocated back to the Seattle area, although I had made dear friends with so many wonderful people, my husband had been asked to cover the West Coast in his job and well, the thought of flying back to Chicago ranked under some other fabulous destinations; most of which included sun and low-humidity heat!

However, right after landing in Seattle... in God's quirky little sense of humor we had just gotten done unpacking (on the corporate dime, mind you) and my husband's company promoted him to cover the entire U.S. for an emerging division.  Thank you Jesus for paying to move us back to Seattle and thank you again for giving us an easier ability to get back to Chicago.  Let's be real, at $500 a pop, airfare to Chicago isn't exactly on the value menu!  Add to the allure of a free hotel and my husband's plane ticket paid for was our  less-than-stellar Seattle winter weather (can anyone say Groundhog day??) and learning that one of my oldest son's friends had been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.  Throw all of that in your crockpot and we decided to make a last minute trip to Chicago.

It's fun to be a returning visitor to your old stomping ground- if you have done life right, you get to come back like a rock star.  I mean, every invite was accepted!  Even the ones that, quite frankly, I wouldn't want to come to!  Lunch with me and all 3 boys in a busy restaurant?  Yes!  Playing at a park in the middle of a weekday when its only 43 degrees out?  Yes!  Play-date after school in the howling wind so my oldest boys can see all their school friends at once?  Yes!  We felt so blessed and loved that people could work us into their busy schedules to visit and catch up with us.

Alas, the romance of a rock-star reunion tour fades into the distance as we cue up the camera that holds the lens of reality.  The day after we arrived my oldest got sick.  Not just sniffly sick, we're talking "take me out to the back and just shoot me" sick.  Curled up fetal on the bench at the arboretum with 5 layers on in 70 degree weather sick.  And oh yeah, fever was so high he threw up all over the back of the passenger seat in our FRIEND'S SUV sick.  (Probably should have had grammatical dashes in there but you get my point.)  Imagine how fun that was to drive our friend's car home, with their own son about to sympathy gag in the back seat and pulling in their driveway to drop everyone off and tell our friends, "hey, we filled your gas tank up but puked all over your upholstery!  Need to head to a detailer, be right back... you don't need your car, right?"

Good friends.  Slow to anger...abounding in giggles and dispensing tylenol while finding a suitable puke bowl to place beside our son while he sleeps in their son's bed.  That's love.  Selling out their own sister to tell me how her nieces and nephews get sick almost every time they travel (as do ours) and have even broken bones on vacations (so have ours) and end up visiting emergency rooms almost everywhere they go.  (Yep, we seem to do that too.)  Hmmmm... so much for empathy...but you get my point?

Don't ever underestimate the relationships that God places in our lives... sometimes they are not of our own choosing, but rather, His choosing.  Usually this spouting off is reserved for God's choice in who we marry...what kind of kids he brings us to raise up, etc.  Well, if he's going to be involved in the biggies... we have to remember that surely he watches over our friendships as well!

You have all seen that poem that goes around, "Some friends are in your life for a season, blah, blah, blah (no disrespect to the author, just don't remember the rest of it."  Well, disrespect aside, its true!  Take for instance our "puke in car" friends... we only met because they were displaced from their home and the home they rented for a few months was across from ours.  None of our children line up..she's an uber-athlete (enough said,) and we didn't run in the same circles.  Yet...she became one of my most dearest treasures of a friend... even after we met.

Oh, friends, don't trivialize your friendships...God knows what he is doing... and he knows we weren't meant to do life alone.   We need those friends who jump in to lend a hand when your son blows through those 3 diapers in 30 minutes and you're elbow deep in ....uh.... wet paper towels trying to clean up... uh.... well.... anyway, we NEED friends who will join you for lunch when you are chasing your kids around Panera like a cat rodeo.  Friends who offer to take your kids for an hour so you can (for the love of the Lord) take a nice hot shower after a long day and night of 3 sick kids in a hotel room.  Now THOSE, are pillars of salt...they flavor the earth with their heart-and-soul contributions into our lives.

Who welcomes you with that gigantic bear hug when you come around the corner?  Who lights up when you walk into a room?  Good friends.  Who sets everything aside when the walls come crashing down?  Good friends.  I deeply cherish the friends who we have not seen in over a year, but are quick to offer dinner in their home; getting together with them reminds us of our grandmother's old patchwork quilt.  Not the moth-ball infused one...but the one the just lets you exhale for the first time in a long while....who makes you sit back and remember what it is that we were created for...community.

Maybe this causes you to look up an old friend, rekindle a strained relationship or just prioritize the great ones you already have.  Maybe you just laugh because if you know me, its yet another posting about how friggin sick my kids get when we travel.  (And yes, I am happy to report we avoided a trip to the E.R. only because I was able to get in with our old pediatrician.  Of course they might still think that I live in Chicago but that is entirely another story and I almost forgive you if you are reading this and judging me...)

So long.... so long of a story for a blog... maybe I'll just staple them all together and write a title page but if nothing else...go tell a friend how much you love them!

Just so I know if anyone reads this far... post and tell me one of your best friendship memories!