Friendship

What is friendship?  Is it merely time spent with someone else, or is it more?  Is it conversations deepened past the state of the weather and familiarity with another person’s history, or is there a greater purpose for friendship?  In the past six weeks I have learned a lot about what it is to be a friend, and not just friendly. 

Our friend Juan helped us move.  He rode along in the truck with our boxes and beds, and helped unload everything when we arrived.  Then he went home to Antigua. 

And suddenly we were alone. 

We knew that moving to a new town, without a team or pre-existing ministry, would be challenging.  We expected to feel lonely at times.  For a couple days it was pretty isolated, but three days after moving we invited Chris over for dinner.  She was a friend-of-a-friend, and even though we didn’t know her, she was more than happy to come over and enjoy a meal with us.  We connected instantly.  Her sarcastic humor kept us laughing, and her compassionate heart comforted me as we sipped tea and chatted in the living room.  She even took the time to sit with Z and do a puzzle.  

The next day, Chris brought over a big bag of spinach for smoothies, since I had mentioned that was something I liked to make. 

During this time, our neighbors, Maria and her son Kevin, were over almost every day, helping us figure out the logistics of life in a very different setting than what we were used to.  They invited us to church, and to parades, and we shared time around the table over multiple meals and pots of tea. She was ill for a couple days, so we brought dinners and prayed with her.   

Our only contacts in our town prior to moving, Pastor Antonio and his wife Kata, also extended friendship to us in the form of spending one morning a week teaching Kata to cook North American style food at their house and then sharing lunch together.  It has become a weekly tradition that everyone looks forward to, although Z’s favorite part is getting to watch Dora the Explorer on their cable TV. 

Over the first three weeks we discovered the other three white missionaries that are working in different towns around the lake.  Each one of them had been feeling isolated from any form of Christian fellowship in English, and so the Saturday night potluck was born.  If you know me, you know who’s idea that was! 

Yesterday night we had dinner with Kevin and his mother.  It was a time of laughter and good conversation, ending with a pot of popcorn and a 500-piece puzzle after Z had gone to sleep.  We introduced Kevin to the melodious sounds of Taylor Swift, and talked about his dreams to be a television anchorman. 

It got me thinking though, what is friendship and why is it so important?  I’m not a philosopher, so maybe my answer isn’t very profound, but to me, friendship is filling the gap.  I showed up in a new town six weeks ago without a single person I would have called a true friend.  I was feeling a little scared and very much alone in the world… and then people stepped up to fill the gap.

Living at the lake still feels foreign to me, but I can feel my heart beginning to take root.  Instead of loneliness and displacement, I have a network of friendships to depend on.  I want to be part of their lives, and they want to be part of mine. 

A cup of tea.  A loaf of bread.  A puzzle.  A smile.  A healing embrace.  A shared prayer. 

Friendship isn’t complex.  Find a gap.  Fill it.