June 6, 2013 by Erin

Old Friends

I’ve been pretty lucky in the friendship department, so one of my favorite parts about growing up is having “old friends.” Something effortless comes into a relationship with history, a settledness that does wonders for my slow soul.

I grin when I remember I’m approaching ten years of friendship with college friends like Elisabeth, Amy, Courtney, and Megan. The fact that they knew 18-year-old Erin, and have seen all the iterations since then, means I don’t really have to explain myself. It means one look or a familiar phrase can replace a paragraph. With them I’ve known some of the golden sessions C.S. Lewis talks about, when “Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us.” What joy.

I’ve been thinking today, though, about even older friends. The truth we all know (but no middle-schooler wants to hear) is that you usually lose touch with adolescent companions. I have, for the most part. I’m still connected to some by fond memories and Facebook, but they don’t really know me, nor I them. If you’ll allow me to state the obvious, we’ve just changed too much. I look at them and think, “I would never be friends with you now.”

But this brings me to an unexpected and lovely surprise. I have found that, with a few old friends, our separated paths have led us in similar directions. After years of barely keeping in touch, and all the angsty twists and turns of college-aged identity building, we’ve turned out to be the same sort of people — now with a mix of old and new common ground.

When I catch up with Bethany, for instance, I think, “You are exactly the kind of person I’d want to befriend if I met you today.” Which is amazing, considering how much has changed since we were 14. Heck, the last time Bethany and I lived in the same town, I was still a card-carrying Pentecostal. I had never heard of Chesterton or tried sushi. I didn’t even know I loved to write yet. And while we probably don’t know each other as well as we used to, I have to smile when I visit her blog and find we have similar taste and interests. (You can find her blog by clicking the button in the sidebar. Be prepared for much more cuteness than you will ever see here.) Better still are the conversations we’ve had in the last few years, recounting the similar conclusions we’ve reached about life and faith.

I could think of it as just a happy accident, but tonight I couldn’t help but see it as a reminder of God’s faithfulness. See, even when I had no clue who I was, He did. And even though I sometimes think of those teenage years as a time when I was so mistaken that nothing really counted, my friendship with Bethany reminds me He was working even then (just as He is now) to make me into exactly the Erin He designed me to be. It also reminds me He’s given me incredible friends — and I’m glad at least a few them can remember me with crooked teeth.