Let's talk more about friendship

Friendship is one of my favorite things in the world, but I rarely find posts or articles or podcasts or sermons or books or songs about it. Advice and discourse about marriage and parenting and family relationships are abundant, but sometimes friendship seems to be missing from conversations. Songs about romantic love can be easily found on any radio station in any genre at any time of day, but songs that celebrate friendship are harder to find. A quick Amazon search for books about marriage immediately lists multiple best sellers, devotionals, and popular authors. Searching Amazon for books about friendship, on the other hand, results in a smattering of books, unfamiliar names, and a few guides for making friendship bracelets. There is a notable lack of best sellers and devotionals. Why is this? 

Perhaps, in the rush to find a romantic partner, we overlook and undervalue friendship. 

Perhaps we don't do a good job of making time in adult life to cultivate and prioritize friendship. Once removed from recess and playground time, do we forget how to make friends in the blur of meetings and work life and careers and families? Have we quietly and secretly determined that friendship is for children and is replaced by romance, family, and parenting as we mature? Do we see friendship as the minor leagues and marriage and family life as the major leagues of interpersonal growth? Do we think we cannot maintain both a healthy family life and healthy friendships?

Perhaps talking and writing about friendship is not as lucrative as romance, marriage, parenting, and family because friendship isn't usually a tool used to reinforce the gender hierarchy between men and women. Content about friendship won't keep women submissive to their husbands or maintain patriarchal power dynamics as frequently as content about romance, marriage, parenting, or family, though those topics are by no means always or necessarily patriarchal.

Perhaps we have bought the lie that friendship is not as deep, and therefore not as valuable, as romantic connection. 

Those are only guesses - I really don't know why friendship seems to be underrepresented in bookstores and podcast playlists and sermons. While I truly believe that romance, marriage, parenting, and family are good topics to discuss and study and are very important parts of life for many people, it frustrates me that friendship is often missing from conversations or presented as an inferior option that is only really valuable for people who have not yet graduated to greater levels of connection. As someone who finds fulfilment and satisfaction in friendship in a world that sometimes seems to undervalue it, I am encouraged by the ways I see friendship present in scripture. 

While we often look to scripture for counsel on marriage and family relationships, we miss that some of the greatest love stories in the Bible are stories of deep and meaningful friendships. We read about Ruth and sometimes obsess over her relationship with Boaz while neglecting to consider her deep friendship with Naomi. Could it be that Ruth's friendship with Naomi was behind her insistence on immigrating to an unfamiliar land? It could be. Is it possible that Naomi's friendship with Ruth was part of her motivation for scheming to get Ruth married to Boaz? Sure. Did these two women stay up late into the night to talk and enjoy one another's company? To drink tea and share stories and dreams? I like to think so. Did they share their feelings with one another and feel accepted, known, and safe with one another? I imagine they did. The writer of Ruth doesn't give us these answers, but I like to think that God used Ruth and Naomi's friendship not only to get Ruth to Israel to play her role in the lineage of Jesus Christ but also to fulfill Ruth and Naomi's personal and human needs for closeness and emotional intimacy. I like to think that God used their friendship to bring them joy, comfort, and deep connection in addition to using their friendship to move salvation history forward. In other words, I like to think that their friendship wasn't only for us as a tool  in God's great plan of redemption - it was for them, too, in the early mornings and late nights, the laughter and the tears, the shared jokes and the shared sorrows.

Ruth and Naomi are not the only examples of friendship that we find in the pages of scripture. We could talk about David and Jonathan or about Paul and all of his dear friends - the ones he travelled with or the ones he lists in Romans 16. The gospels record enough about Jesus with Peter, James, and John and with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus that I can find no word other than "friendship" to describe these relationships. They hung out. They ate meals together. I think they enjoyed being with one another. I think they had inside jokes and stayed up way too late talking and laughing and crying. I think they felt known and loved and safe together the way I feel with my friends. I think they looked forward to hanging out and had stories that they just had to share with one another. I think they made special note of each others favorite snacks and brought some to share when they visited together.

So I dedicate this post to my friends. To the friends who make me feel safe and loved. To the friends who listen to me, who give me the space I need to think and process, who want to know my thoughts and feelings. To the friends who know my favorite coffee shops and make time for food adventures and hiking trips. To the friends who send me letters at the perfect moment and belt songs with me at the top of their lungs. To the friends who ask me about my grass and to those who send me text messages just to check in. To the friends who are not fazed or put off by my tears because they know me, which means that they know that tears are part of how I express some things. To the friends who call to share their hopes and ideas and worries and fears and experiences. To the friends who continue to give me television recommendations knowing full well that I will never get to them and to the friends who schedule flights and campsites and feel no pressure to break the silence. To the friends that have chocolate ready when I come over and to the friends who listen to my thoughts in draft form before they are polished. I love you and I love being friends with you.