It’s just like going home…
Do you have any friendships that are so easy to slip back into, like a really comfy pair of PJs? A relationship with someone who knows you so well that even after months away, it’s like you’ve not been apart at all?
One of my best friends from college is here visiting this week and next, and while we’ve both changed a lot over the last 8 years since we first met when I picked her up from the airport before we left for freshman scholarship orientation at Mars Hill, we can still pick up pretty much right where we left off whenever we saw each other last. (In this case, when I was out in WA visiting her last fall.) We’ve gone through many oscillations in our relationship, but we always come back to the point of treasuring our frienship, whatever it’s flaws.
This is not the case with all of my friendships, as is probably the case with some of yours. Some frienships require so much emotional energy that spending time around them leaves me exhausted. While I’m very open to the possibility that friendships can be great grounds for ministry to someone’s very real emotional and physical needs, sometimes too many of those kinds of relationships can completely zap my energy for any kind of relationship. And I do love helping my friends when they’re struggling; it’s only when that energy drainage becomes the predominant theme of the friendship that I begin to struggle.
But that is not the case with my friendship with Dawn – we certainly argued in college (mostly about typical roommate stuff) and we don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything, but our foundation for friendship is pretty solidly based in years of knowledge about each other, years spent talking about anything and everything, the boys we liked, the ones we didn’t, the craziness of a particular professor, etc. Unlike so many other relationships, I feel like I can be completely myself around her, and I hope she feels likewise – we give each other room to be ourselves.
So here’s to friendships, old, new, struggling or thriving – how boring life would be without them! 
Here here! Those kind of friendship are the best. Glad you are going to get to spend time together
I have a couple of those. One is my childhood best friend; I hadn’t seen him for years, but I went up to Ohio a couple years ago, and we had a normal, non-awkward, hour-long conversation like we’d never been apart [although we had for 15 years]. The other is a friend from college, whom I went to lunch with on Monday.