"My friends are my estate." Emily Dickinson
I am beginning to believe that maybe true friendship is just as much about stolid endurance as anything else. Not something I've always exemplified. The friend that sticks it out with you, believing that it will get better, that your better nature will re-surface and that she wants to be there when it finally does, to cheer and applaud. I suppose there is also a healthy dose of faith in the mix. So given the question again, I might say that a good friend helps in times of trial by sticking by your side, listening to the gripes and woes, all the while believing, that somehow, the best of you will come out on top, even better than before.
I've known a couple of these kinds of friends in my lifetime. Thank you.
I love this picture. My Grandma Mary is the one with the white flower behind her ear and I don't know a single other person in the photo, but I do recognize the comfortable look of friendship. This picture was taken somewhere around WWII. She was a nurse at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. A fabulous legacy of stories, some sad, some hysterical, are mine to remember her by.
In Relief Society last week, we talked about friendship and what it means to be a true friend. I enjoyed listening to the thoughts of the other women and was happy to be at the back of the room, a safe distance. However, the teacher, a woman I really admire, called on me and asked my thoughts on how we can be better friends in times of hardship. Oh. I thought: speak to me when I'm seventy and have some hindsight.
In Relief Society last week, we talked about friendship and what it means to be a true friend. I enjoyed listening to the thoughts of the other women and was happy to be at the back of the room, a safe distance. However, the teacher, a woman I really admire, called on me and asked my thoughts on how we can be better friends in times of hardship. Oh. I thought: speak to me when I'm seventy and have some hindsight.
I am beginning to believe that maybe true friendship is just as much about stolid endurance as anything else. Not something I've always exemplified. The friend that sticks it out with you, believing that it will get better, that your better nature will re-surface and that she wants to be there when it finally does, to cheer and applaud. I suppose there is also a healthy dose of faith in the mix. So given the question again, I might say that a good friend helps in times of trial by sticking by your side, listening to the gripes and woes, all the while believing, that somehow, the best of you will come out on top, even better than before.
I've known a couple of these kinds of friends in my lifetime. Thank you.
3 comments:
" . . . the comfortable look of friendship" - I love the wording of that phrase. I am grateful for friends like these and find myself often wishing for more. Is that greedy? :P
you are quite an amazing writer. and i love your hear your thoughts. i wish you were here in ca and not so far in ga. it would be fun. i just love you and think you are amazing.
i have some very inspiring photos of young friendship that your grandchildren may one day post on their blogs. many of them involve rolls of toilet paper. do you think this will be confusing to them?
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