Thankful Challenge - November 13

Friendship.  What is it?  There are literally hundreds of pages devoted to it in Google, and the following quotes say it so much better than I ever could

"Every person is a new door to a different world."

- from movie "Six Degrees of Separation" 

"The better part of one's life consists of his friendships." - Abraham Lincoln

"No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever." 

- Francois Mocuriac

"It's the friends you can call up at 4am that matter." 

- Marlene Dietrich

"A friend is a gift you give yourself." 

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"I count myselt in nothing else so happy

As in a soul rememb'ring my good friends."
- William Shakespeare

In my own humble words, friends are truly a gift from God.  Who can you call at 4 in the morning when a crisis happens and they are there for you?  Who can you call to whine about a problem and they just listen and never judge?  Who believes in you when you quit believing in yourself?

Who can you count on?  Who is there for you to pick you up during the bad times? Who shares the triumphs of the good times?

I have always been slow to trust.  I don't have hundreds of friends.  And that is ok with me because the friends I do have, I know I can always count on to be there for me.

Friends come and go in your lifetime.  Different stages in my life have brought different friends into my life.  Each one of them was important to me and they still are.  I have friends that date back to my high school years.  We've had out ups and downs, but the friendship is still there.

I think the most important factor in a friendship is the art of forgiveness.  We will all make mistakes at one point or another, and it's our job as a friend, to forgive those mistakes and continue to love.

I'm grateful that I have friends that have forgiven me and continue to love me.  Can you say the same?