Friend?

How do you define friendship? How do you decide when a particular person is a friend? Qualities that come to mind, both from my experience and confirmed by Wikipedia, are:

• mutual understanding and compassion
• the ability to be and express oneself without fear of judgement
• enjoyment of each other's company
• honesty, even in situations where honesty is difficult
• sympathy and empathy
• trust
• the desire for what is best for the other person
• positive reciprocity
• a feeling of comfort and security

Every person will rearrange this list to suit her own desires and needs, even add to it or remove items that are personally irrelevant. Items could possibly even shift as the friendship grows.

What happens then...when the two lists are too different or they become divergent over time?

The obvious, obviously...misunderstandings, discourse, miscommunication.

It is relatively easy to manage the situation when the lists are different from the beginning. There is less emotional relationship and therefore less tugging and pulling as the "friendship" is dissolved.

Where the real pain comes in is when the friendship has already been established based on supposed mutual expectations, and then things change.

Promises made in another light of a past day become harder to keep.

The friendship erodes, or maybe even implodes, but deep concepts like trust and emotional security have to be questioned and re-evaluated.

I wrote a post a few years back called When Friends Turn Away. I continue to strongly believe and maintain faith in God's greater plan for us and who He puts into our lives and why.

It doesn't mean that it all doesn't hurt...sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

My concept of friendship has been challenged this past week. More than challenged. I think the better term is "rocked my world", and not in a good way. Questions of where I went wrong swirl in my head. As the storm settles, the questions are answered, kind of...and then give way to more questions.

While the tears have come and gone, the wall has gone up. A wall that I thought I had torn down.

I believe that this time, that wall will be up for awhile. It now hurts too much to risk letting it down for anyone else.

With God's help, maybe I can force some peepholes into...at some point. Until then, I pray at the foot of it.