To All My Besties!

I believe in bosom buddies, soul-mates, lifelong friendships.

My son recently met and became friends with someone he feels he was meant to be friends with. Someone he feels will be a lifelong friend.  When he was trying to articulate the importance of this friend to my husband, he said "it is like mom and Sara."

I met Sara when I was a sophomore in college while studying in Israel.  In total, there were 90 of us sharing the experience, but initially each one of us was alone.  We were strangers living in a strange land, drawn together through fear, a sense of adventure, excitement, and close living quarters.  I don't know why her and not another of the 88 students, but our friendship was fast, immediate, and profound.

We have been best friends for nearly 30 years.  We don't live near each other nor do we talk often, but we are still connected.  When we do get together, we pick up where we left off and it is as if no time time has passed.  After a visit with her, I feel uplifted, understood, and unconditionally accepted.  If I need something, anything, I know I can depend on her.  I'm sure she feels the same about me.  

Throughout my life, I have had hundreds of friends, but only a few have been friends of the same import, same worth, as Sara.  Each of those friendships has entered my life when I was in need of just such a friend:  when I began college, when I was studying abroad, when we moved our little family away from home to begin graduate school, when I began a new job, when we settled into what would become our home. In each of those moments, I was vulnerable in a way that at the time I probably would have denied, but I now know I was most certainly in need of a true friend.

As a girl, I read Anne of Greene Gables repeatedly.  I found in that story a connection to a female heroine that I had longed for.  She had red hair and freckles, was smart, and often found herself in trouble because of her fierce independence and unbridled tongue.  She was a fictionalized version of me--or at least what I thought I was.  I don't think I realized it at the time, but another element of the story that resonated for me was Anne's friendship with Diana Barry, her bosom buddy.  I secretly--even unconsciously--longed for my own bosom buddy, a reciprocal friendship that relied on trust, acceptance, understanding, and fierce loyalty.

I have found her more than once, and more than once that friendship was at least one of the things I needed at the time to develop, to find myself and my own independence, to feel secure.  Interestingly, I'm fairly certain they each needed my friendship at the same time for the same reasons.

Perhaps those friendships are serendipitous, a fortunate happenstance.  Two people in need; two people willing to fill a need.  Perhaps those friendships are divine interventions, gifts from a caring Creator who sees and knows us individually.  Whatever their origin, the import of those friendships is clear and was most simply articulated by a teenage son who knew little of this when he described his new, very important friendship as a friendship like Sara and mom.

Written March 8, 2015