Friendships can be what we choose to put into them. I (Christina) have learned over the past 5 years that quality versus quantity of friendships is what is important for me. Back in high school it used to be about the quantity of friends because that showed popularity. The problem became that once I graduated from high school and moved away to go to college I no longer kept up with any of those friends because we didn't have the quality of friendship that we would make it over the distance. From my high school days I only keep in contact with a few and those were the people that I spent quality time getting to know and our friendship was on a deeper level. When I moved away or they moved away we had the strong desire to keep in contact with eachother in order to stay connected with eachothers lives. So, in college I changed my focus for friendships and started focusing more on quality than quantity and it has made a huge difference in the longevity of them. Granted I met a lot of people in college and don't keep up with them all, but the ones that I did put more energy into to get to know on a deeper level are the ones that I am still in contact with today. I am also grateful for new internet connecting sites like facebook that help me to stay in contact with many friends from both high school and college.
The reason I started thinking about this a lot was that Ben and I recently moved and in the 2 months since we left from Chicago we have already had 3 sets of our friends come to visit and we were invited to a beach house as well to meet up with former church friends. It is extremely touching to have people specifically plan and come to see us just to keep up the friendship. It is touching when people will not allow distance to stop them from being apart of your life. Moving from place to place is a natural part of life and God has called us to be faithful to follow wherever he is leading us. Moving can also be a scary and lonely journey in life, but when you have friends all around the world who are praying for you, calling you, writing you and making special trips to see you, you know that God is in those friendships and that those friendships are life-long friendships.
Since moving to Indiana Ben and I have met some new people who we know that overtime will develop into new friendships and we are excited for that. Only the Lord knows if we will be moving again, but I am more confident than ever that in that time we will not be losing any friends, but just expanding our network of friendships around the world.
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