Weddings, funerals, babies and funerals, Oh My!
There’s something that happens when you’ve known someone for a long time; the shared memories and experiences form a bond that only time and familiarity can solidify. New friendships are exciting and fun. It’s exhilarating getting to know someone new and getting to learn all about them, but there’s nothing like sitting down with someone you’ve spent endless hours with.
A strange thing about having old friends is that it requires us to be getting older. Mind you, getting old doesn’t really bother me all that much, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that you are getting older.
You just live day after day without much thought about the ticking of the clock, especially since the computers that we carry around in our pocket that function as clocks don’t make a ticking sound.
My knees sometimes tell me I’m getting older, or the gray hairs that are showing up in my beard, but it’s in the interactions with decades long friends that I really feel my age.
Last fall I went to a friend’s fathers funeral and as was expected, there was a crowd of people I have known most of my life. We spent a few minutes reminiscing, telling fun stories about our friend’s father, and then we sat down for the service. The fact that we are now old enough for our parents to by passing away hit me like a ton of bricks.
That’s the power of old friendships though. Not everyone has been to your wedding ten years ago. Not everyone has been around long enough to send you baby gifts. And not everyone sat in the church while you preached your mothers funeral. It’s the old friendships that have been there in the critical moments; at the time they were just being friends, but it’s the being there over the course of years that does something to the friendship.
New friends can do that too, and I’ve got some of those that have walked through seasons that we will like back in twenty years and marvel at where God has taken us.
And then they’ll be old friends too.
