Growing up, it’s safe to say I was kind of a loaner. I had a couple “besties” when I was younger but I never had a large group of friends, a clique if you will. This isn’t something I realized until I was older and in college when I did have a large group I called good friends. They were my people – the people I laughed with, talked with, drank with, studied with, cried with, lived with. They knew me better than most. I did life with these people.
Fast forward and I was suddenly married with children. I grew up in a faith-based household but it wasn’t something I made a priority when I was young. I went to church and religious education classes because I was told I needed to do so. When I started having children, my faith became important to me. Though it was important to me, I felt as if I was starting over. I spent time trying to find a church we enjoyed, which was a task every time we moved (my husband is military so for a while, this happened often). I tried to read the Bible and educate myself, spend more time in prayer and feel a deeper connection to God. All of these exercises were a part of the process, but I soon realized that who I surrounded myself with was also a piece to the puzzle I had not yet considered.
We eventually found a church we not only felt comfortable in, but looked forward to attending whenever we could (in addition to Sunday mornings). We also found a faith-based school we loved and our children started attending. We found our community. We found a new group of people we could do life with. As a military family, we were moving often and being forced to find new friends more often than many civilian families. Finding friends that you not only feel comfortable with but that also share your faith in God can be difficult.
I have many friends, with many different beliefs. I genuinely love them each individually for a variety of reasons. But when you find ‘faith friends’, the friends that share the same beliefs about God, well that’s a game changer – for me it is anyway. A faith friend is a different kind of friend. Faith friends are those friends that you know are praying for you and your family just because. They are the friends that will reach out asking for prayers and know that without a single doubt, that you too, will drop everything at that moment to pray for them. They will buy you a calendar with a verse from scripture on the cover simply because it reminds them of you. They will ask you to join them at a retreat because they know you desperately need it – a little extra peace, a little extra love, a lot of grace and Jesus. They will send you a text saying “I prayed for you today” out of the blue and to that I think, “how did they know I needed this?” Faith friends know. We laugh, we cry, we drink, we count on one another, we raise our kids together, and we love God together. They are a valuable part of my life and it is something I will continue to thank God for daily!
Credence & Chaos 