You find out who your friends are...

This last month while everything has been going on, I have had a lot of time to think about friends and what they mean to me. Why do we need friends? Why do I need friends?

I think back through all my life and consider the friends I have had. Am I still friends with most of them? Not really. I am still best friends with one of my best friends from High School, but for most everyone else, those "friends" you will have for life, be BFF'S forever with, they just aren't your real friends anymore. Now facebook has made "friendships" a lot more of a loose term. I hate that they call it friendships. I am not friends with the random girl from my biology class sophomore year that sat across the table from me and we exchanged words maybe a few times, and she randomly found me on facebook through other mutual high school friends. You know exactly the kind I'm talking about. The kid you met at some friends' birthday party 3 years ago, you don't remember his name, but somehow you become friends on facebook, and in fact you don't even remember how or when you became friends on there in the first place. You never talk to each other, but you each know a lot more about each other than you ever wanted through facebook posts and pictures, you really should delete them, but it's almost rude? Yup, we all got em!

I think they should really add an "acquaintance" button to facebook instead lol. So what is a friend, if it's not you sisters', friends', cousin who went to the same church as you? I'm still trying to figuring it out.

Being married and having friends is SUCH a different world than friends as a single person or friends in high school. Or at least it should be. There are those couple friends you hang out with with your spouse, your individual friends which you introduced to your spouse, and now you are all friends, and your individual friends that you hang out with or go out to the lunch with while your husband is at work. Friendships while married takes on a totally different dynamic, but what those friends do for you mentally, and emotionally should all be the same. I think a friend, a true friend, is someone who is there for you unconditionally. Someone who has you at the heart of their concerns, and when they ask you, "what can I do for you?" or "how are you doing?" they mean it. They genuinely mean it and want a genuine answer. A real friend is someone who will drop anything to be by your side if you need it, someone who selflessly serves the other person because they care, not because they want to show off, or not because its just an obligation to be nice.

My best friend Ashley is one of the greatest people I have ever met. She is GORGEOUS. She is fun, she is kind, she is driven, and most of all, she is genuine. When Ashley asks me how I'm doing, I know she is asking because she wants to know, and she wants me to answer with a real answer, not just the standard "GOOD!" (because, you gotta admit it, everyone says they are good sometimes just as a reflex response, even when life might be a hell hole.) Ashley and I have always had a great friendship. The years we have been best of friends, we had changed a lot, but the one thing that has never changed is that real love and concern. That's what we need in life. Too often these days, friendships get lazy. Are we not lazy and lax about our friendships on facebook? Things like that have given us the opportunity to finagle our way out traditional friendship, in which you invest time in THE PERSON, not into "oh well I read their status, saw their pictures, read their blog. Looks like all is well. I did my job as a friend."

We did not. Did we call them? Did we actually check into past the surface of "good"? If we just investigate a little further past the good, we might find out that "good" is more like "crappy" and they have just been waiting for us to pry a little further, so they can open up to someone who cares, and relieve some of that stress. We need to step it up. I need to step it up. I have realized that I am guilty of this too, I have not been doing my job as a friend. I have not been there as much as I should be for friends, friends I truly love. I have been busy, lazy, and impatient. If I want good friends, I need to be a good friend in return. So do you. You can't expect everyone to just love you. If you don't try, if you don't put forth the effort, all of your "kindness" and nice personality is being wasted. You need to put in action, I need to put in action.

So ask yourself, What kind of friends do you want? What kind of friend do you want to be? What kind of friend are you NOW?
Everyones true colors come out eventually. You find out who your friends are, and so will they. :)