Enduring Souls

Look around you and see where they are – the ones that have stayed. Maybe there are some new ones, and you’d bet your big toe they’ve got that special something too. I’m talking about the friendships that massage our beat-up hearts. When we are little kids, open and wise beyond our years, friendships come easy. Our only credentials are our names and not the sort that speak to some pedigree. You call me this and I’ll call you that so we can find each other again. Why? Because I like how it feels when we do.

My 20-year high school reunion is this July, and it’s one of those events that causes you to check your friendship portfolio. Have you bought into who you should and cut loose those that hold you back? Actually, it doesn’t matter. The real friends find us when we need them. When we are as good to the world as a rotting head on a stick, they still come for us. They don’t just forgive, they forget, remember and forgive again. If you are still new on this planet you might not realize this yet, but these are the souls that delight.

My son is three years old and since his birth I’ve been working from home. The only loop that has included me lately is the rubber band I use to pull my hair into a pony tail. For months, even a year or more, I couldn’t put my finger on what was troubling me. Something deeper than the surface stuff. Those touch stones I’d come to know over the years were hundreds of miles away. How I missed what it felt like to really be seen and understood at the same time. Then divine grace put a couple new friends in my life, the kind we decide to keep. That’s it, I thought. That’s what I have been needing. My lung capacity grew in that moment. If you’ve had this happen than you know all you can do is breathe in these darling souls. Take them into the cells of your body, into the silence between your joyous and most difficult thoughts. Are these best friends? Are they soul companions? Playmates? Nope. Keepers – where and when ever they are.

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