Five Minute Friday - Friends

So let’s spend our five minutes of writing today, sharing about friendship. Fight it, love it, hate it, hurt or healed by it, we were certainly built for it.

Set a timer and just write. Don’t worry about making it just right or not.

Go all in with your words.

Are you ready?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking

2. Link back over here at Lisa Jo's and invite others to join in.

3. Please visit the person who linked up before you and encourage them in their comments.

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes on:

::

Friend…

START

A year ago, my life crashed in around my ears.  I lost my best friend.  She was a friend of my heart.  A friend of my soul.  Someone I trusted completely.  She turned away from friendship, from me, from all that I hold dear.  She broke my heart.
 I have always had a hard time making friends.  It is not something that comes easily to me.  I have always wanted them, needed them, but really struggled to find them.  I struggle to fit in with those who are around me.  It did not help that I uprooted our family to a new town seven years ago.  To a place where we had no family and knew no one.  My friends, that I had for most of my life, became, at that moment, out of reach.
I am a busy mom.  I work, I drive the kids everywhere, I teach, I try.  But lets face it, the time that I need to spend on my family is enormous.  The time I have for friends, not so much.   I have learned that friends require time.  They require nurturing, they require effort.  In the midst of my battle with depression and anxiety it is not the best time in my life to discover a way to change my focus outward and find new friends. 
I am learning.  I am starting all over again.  I am figuring out that there are people who care.  Who believe in me.  Who are there for me.  I am making new "best friends".  I am changing from having one friend to many.  I can't even begin to tell you how these amazing women have been there for me through this year.  I can't begin to describe the way they have reached out and taken me in.  How they remind me that I have worth and that everything will eventually work out OK. 
 I am learning that friends do not seek to destroy you; they lift you and help you, even when you are not in a place to return the favor.  I am finding love and friendship in places I never knew.  I find amazing friends in my own part of the blogging world, I find friendship in the minds and hearts of my grown daughters, I find friendship in an amazing doctor and a fellow EMT. 
I am finding friendship where I never thought to look before.  I am healing and being healed by the greatest Friend of all, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  In a way I don't yet understand, He has endured my hurts for me.  He knows the pain of depression and grief.  He loves me in spite of me and calls me His Friend.  And I am learning, that is enough.   

STOP