friendship

Often when I pose questions about friendship or write about it, it can sometimes be quite negative which can be kind of mean. Now that Holiday Club has finished and I’ve got chance to get some thoughts down I thought I’d go ahead and scribble, well tap them down, this time it’s more positive and general wonderings.

Someone made a comment to me about investing in friendships and growing a particular friendship. Then I got thinking about how do you grow a friendship because clearly it’s not like growing a plant (which I’m not very good at!). It’s not like you can take the friendship outside and feed it plant food, replant it in a bigger pot which with rich compost and make sure you water it each day. Oh and make sure it has enough sunshine but not too much.

(It’s kind of dawned on me that it might come out like I’m begging for sympathy which isn’t the case at all. I’m putting these thoughts out there to see what you guys think and if you’ve got advice and all that kind of thing)

Yeah so, I’ve got a bunch of friends who’d I’d class as my best friends but minus the leaving party this evening for a mutual friend I hadn’t really seen any of them for a while unless it’s been at church things and then you tend to be talking about the church thing or listening to the preach/singing your socks off in the worship.

In that academical (is that a word?) kind of way I went off to look at the dictionary definition of a friendship…..

Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between two or more people. Friendship is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an association

So how do you make a friendship? I thought about the situation where you approach another child in the playground and sheepishly ask them “will you be my friend?” Well that works when your 6 and want someone to play with but what about when you’re an adult? Could I approach an adult and ask the same question? I’m not really sure I could. What do you think?

Once you get past that initial awkwardness how do you develop that friendship? Again back to the plant analogy, what’s the compost that feeds a friendship, what’s the sunshine in that friendship and what’s that plant food? I guess you then get into the realm of “If I text you to see how you’re doing is once a day too much or should it be closer to a few times a week?”

It’s possible that I’m overanalysing this and that it’s actually much simpler than I’m making it out to be, but maybe it is complicated. Is it possible to be love with the idea of the perfect best friend but not necessarily be able find one? (Or two?)

Then I get thinking about what qualities would you look for in a friend? I’d look for someone I could have a laugh with, could trust with my secrets and thoughts but also someone who was going to encourage me to step out my comfort zone once in a while and challenge me in my faith (not in bad ways but in like a “so what would God say about that……?” and challenge me to be a better Christian).

Right given the time I am going to head off for a sleep now. Hope you are all doing okay.