There’s this thing about women.

They may be wearing purple boots or skinny jeans or sweat pants.

But when they do that thing — that thing where they look right into your eyes, where they just reach over and hug you, where they whisper secret truths in tears that trail slowly down their cheeks.

Where they surprise you with a packet of Twizzlers, where they smile into the scrunched up face of your daughter, where they save you a spot at dinner.

Where they lend you their lipstick, where they aren’t afraid to babysit your screaming baby, where they hold your hand tight, tight while you try to exhale, where they compliment your hair.

Yeah, that thing they do?

It’s life-giving. It’s oxygen and courage and conviction all rolled into one.

It’s the kind of superpower that can turn a day inside out.

What women can do for one another.

How they can heal each other with the power of laughter. Of encouragement. Of acceptance.

And hospitality that’s contagious.

Sometimes we’re so busy wondering if we’re getting it right, so busy worrying we’re not measuring up, so caught up in thinking we need to be just like her that we forget she loves us just the way we are.

She loves the joy and Jesus and friendship and tired-up-all-night-with-the-baby eyes that make you, you. Forget awkward, forget feeling small or insecure or worried about what she’s thinking.

This version of friendship is a true story, an old story, the same story that we’ve all been living. This is the hard choice of staying committed to our friends, our communities, our dreams and our God who is the crossroads where all these broken places are connected, mended, restored and intimately comprehended.

This kind of friendship is the gift. It is the going first. It is the testimony of the brave who chose friendship in spite of fear. This is the loud voice of comparison squashed down, drowned out, overcome by a choice to love, to love, to love because Christ first loved us.

This brave choice is the laying down of jealousy, the raising up of encouragement. This is the cheering for someone else and feeling the powerful joy in return.

This is where it’s OK to cry. This is where we cup your cheeks and your heart and your stories. This is where we nod our heads and open our arms and say, “me too. Yes, me too.”

This is the hard work of getting along.

This is friendship on purpose.

We see it in each of you. In how you encourage and pray and reach out a kind hand in the comments. Day in and day out.

We see you.

We see how you believe the best, and hold up her tired arms, and encourage her spirits and whisper in her ear how brave you think she is.

We see you doing that thing women do.

And we’re so grateful to call you friends. 

 

 

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