on friendship...

I'm reading Shauna Niequist's book, 'Bittersweet'.  (You might remember that I loved her previous book, 'Cold Tangerines'.  There is part of her book that I've reread about 4 or 5 times... I love it and think it's important enough to share:

"Share your life with the people you love, even if it means saving up for a ticket and going without a few things for a while to make it work.  There are enough long lonely days of the same old thing, and if you let enough years pass, and if you let the routine steamroll your life, you'll wake up one day, isolated and weary, and wonder what happened to all those old friends.  You'll wonder why all you share is Christmas cards, and why life feels lonely and bode-dry.  We were made to live connected and close..."

"So walk across the street, or drive across town, or fly across the country, but don't let really intimate loving friendships become the last item on a long to-do list.  Good friendships are like breakfast.  You think you're too busy to eat breakfast, but then you find yourself exhausted and cranky halfway though the day, and discover that your attempt to save time totally backfired.  In the same way, you can try to go it alone because you don't have time or because your house it too messy to have people over, or because making new friends is like the very worst parts of dating.  But halfway through a hard day or a hard week, you'll realize in a flash that you're breathtakingly lonely, and that the Christmas cards aren't much company.  Get up, make a phone call, buy a cheap ticket, open your front door.

Because there really is nothing like good friends, like the sounds of their laughter and the tones of their voices and the things they teach us in the quietest, smallest moments."

And that right there, my friends, is good stuff.  Really good stuff.  This year I'm stepping outside my box.  I'm making a bigger effort and trying new things.  And loving on my friends...