affirming friendship evaluation

This morning has started with two cups of coffee, office chit chat, my prince charming bringing me a breakfast sandwich (at the office - I'm spoiled rotten) and lots of Thunder wear. None of this has anything to do with this post but sounded like a good introduction. Let's get on with it shall we?

My friend Jodi and I are in tune this week even though we are a thousand miles away from each other. I wrote a post called "busy bees" on Monday, Jodi wrote a post titled "busy bees" on Monday. She wrote a post this morning about waiting for her to digest some stuff and that when she had done so, she'd have lots to blog about. I have been feeling that way all week. And what I've been mulling over (or chewing on, as she calls it) for the last 72 hours has to do with my friends (including Jodi - and now we've come full circle).

Monday night, I had girls bible study/book club and we talked about a chapter out of the book Captivating called "Mothers, Daughters, Sisters". Good chapter, good book. We talked about how imperative it was for women to have other female friends. We spent a lot of time talking about why it was necessary, what characteristics about females made it difficult and easy to have other female friends, etc., etc.
And then the leader of the study had us all start thinking about our friends. We were to think about our dearest, closest, most intimate friends. She wanted us to keep it to a limit of three so that we weren't completely overwhelming our little diagram she had printed out. Then we were supposed to think about our close friends, but not the ones you would call at 2:00 in the morning. These were the friends that you hung out with, that you liked, that you had a good time with, but you wouldn't necessarily spill the beans for every time you saw them. And then you got to throw your acquaintances on top. The nice thing about these groups was that they weren’t set in stone and that we all knew people moved in and out of the groups regularly. But I racked my brain the whole time trying to fit my female friends into those categories. I hated it. I hated categorizing people and evaluating relationships I had never really thought about before.

“I mean how close are we really…” ran through my head a few times along with “what if I put her in my intimate friends group but she doesn’t put me in hers?!”. I didn’t like the evaluation game and I didn’t like where some of my friends were realistically falling. Right towards the end of our discussion it occurred to me – this was not third grade and we were not on a playground deciding who got to wear the other part of our BFF necklaces. We were adults who had friends and it didn’t matter if someone I put in one category put me in theirs. They were still someone I considered myself to be close to and as much as I’d like to know where I would rank in everyone’s little diagrams, why did it matter?

That night one of the girls I had decided probably belonged in that intimate category and if she didn’t yet, I wanted her to, called me to check on me. She had also been in on this discussion and could tell I was having a rough week and that I hadn’t been myself. We talked for a bit on the phone and when I hung up, I made sure her name was in that “intimate friend” category. And then she sent me flowers the next day. I love that girl and she totally locked herself up in that title.

It’s amazing the friendships I have. One of the people I feel the most comfortable telling anything to lives 1,000 miles away and is the wife of one of my husband’s high school friends. One of the others are in my church class and even one is part of my family. One of them has nothing in common with me other than a previous job and I love that I have such a diverse set of friends and that I have people to fit into every category.

I also like a new set of friendships that is making its appearance lately due to some related hardships. I know that sounds like a cheesy support group and maybe that’s what it is but it’s working for me and I hope it’s working for them too.

I don’t know why this topic was such a hard one for me to digest this week. I’ve always had the friendships and I’ve always been grateful for them. I think the title and placement of those relationships was what was eye opening and thought provoking. It allowed me to decide if I liked who it was I was closest to and if those relationships needed to be re-evaluated. It helped me to determine who it was I would go to in a panic or with ridiculous news of nothing with importance. And there’s some comfort in knowing who those people are.