Friendship That Lingers

Friendship That Lingers

Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

My sister Katrina met Jean on the first day of tenth-grade English class.

“I was curious,” Jean later said. “I sensed a profound kindness under her calm, quiet demeanor. I wanted to be her friend.”

Their deepening friendship was tested the following spring when Jean’s dad announced he was leaving their family.

“I was angry but never outward,” Jean said. “I turned it in, I withdrew, I hated. I made plans to leave high school early and start college. It was my version of running away.”

That summer, she and Katrina spent a lot of time together.

“She was always there to listen and be what I needed most,” Jean said. “Katrina introduced me to her family, who made me feel loved and safe. One day while at her house I quipped about how fun it would be to drive her dad’s new truck, a sporty red pickup. Katrina came back and announced, ‘You can!’ I couldn’t believe it. Why would he trust a sixteen-year-old he just met? But he did. He trusted. I never took that for granted.”

The friends kept in touch over the years, but when Katrina died at twenty-eight, it would have been easy for Jean to sever the family connection. Instead, she has stopped at my parents’ house and welcomed out-of-the-blue phone calls from them.

There’s an intimacy that builds in soul-deep friendships, and sometimes those connections spill over to those around us. In the case of Jean, it’s meant a lot to my family that she has continued to make an effort to stay connected, even years after Katrina’s passing.

“I don’t think her family knows just how much they carried me through one of the darkest times in my life with simple acts of kindness that I see now were always rooted in Christlike love,” Jean said recently. “I see now that is what I was drawn to in Katrina—Christ’s light within her.”

Sometimes friendship doesn’t need to be proclaimed loudly—rather, it’s a quiet presence made known by our actions, by the care we show others when words aren’t enough. And it’s a witness and testimony of our love and our faith, even over a period of many years.

— Kristin

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

Reconnect with an old friend you haven’t talked to in a while.