David and Jonathon Pacts-Keeping Friendships

You cannot keep intimate friendships up with everyone. The sad fact is, when you move away, you will have many friends that you only are able to talk with occassionally--perhaps once a year or even longer. I have friends from high school that I see only at reunions. Occasionally I'll get an email or a picture from them, but not often. But we still enjoy one another. When we get together, we have a great time. And we make plans to visit each other some years. Well, if not "plans," then we at least think about it.

I have a friend named Ericka from high school, who lives in Flagstaff, Arizona. At our last reunion we talked about going and visiting her and her family in Arizona and going to see the grand canyon.

We have some friends in Connecticut, Bob and Holly, who we know from college. We just corresponded with each other for the first time in a long time. Despite the long gap in time, we both expressed mutual interest friendship. How can you feel that you have "friends" in a far distant place when you have not spoken to them in years? I do not know, but we do, and apparently they do as well.

I have made a few "David and Jonathon" type of pacts with a handful of my friends, in which we vow to correspond with each other once a week in some way. This can be through an email, a phone call, a blog post, a card, or a visit. It takes time and energy to keep up friendships over long distances. But it is worth it. We all need people that we can rely upon to care about us, pray for us during difficult times, and who will celebrate with us through our joys and triumphs.

There are different types of friendships, and friendships, even David and Jonathon ones, may go through different stages. But in whatever form, we need friendships. I once read that if you do not have 5 friends that you could call at a moment's notice during a crisis, then you are in trouble. I am blessed to have some great friendships. To my David and Jonathan friends, and to all of my extended friendships--people whom I see rarely now but still hold most dear--I say, thank you. And my hope is that through this blog, I can stay in contact with more people than I could before.

How do we develop meaningful friendships? Why is this a challenge for us?