Excerpt from FREE TO BE: friendship

What a healthy friendship looks like:

A healthy relationship is founded on mutual trust and respect, and there is an absence of fear. Friends feel free to discuss and share or to be private from time to time. In a healthy friendship each encourages the other person to grow (and is not fearful if the other person changes). Health in friendship shows itself through the acceptance of each other.

Depth of friendship is revealed when each party has the freedom to express deep-felt thoughts, aspirations and secrets and feels safe doing so, confident that even in vulnerability there is mutual respect and caring. Friends can agree to disagree and still be friends, because the relationship is based on love that is deeper than perfect compatibility or agreement. Finally, a friend does not hold a vested interest in what the other chooses but rather allows the other person independence and a separate identity. This kind of relationship will call interdependent, because there is a mutual reliance (but not dependence) between the two people.

This bond of friendship makes us feel more secure, accepted, respected, trusted and loved. We were created to be in relationship with one another. God made man in His image, and then he made woman, because it was "not good that man should be alone." (Genesis 2:18) Relationship gives us a sense of purpose, accomplishment and fulfillment. It is a wonderful expression of who we are when we share moments of our lives with someone else. Accomplishments seem greater and discouragements smaller when we share them with another human being.

But rarely are our significant relationships this transparent. We need to be filled with love, and yet we are ill-equipped to relate. So we strive to retain our relationships through less-than-total transparency to avoid the pain of isolation and failure. The degree to which we limit our relating is the degree to which there is room for co-dependency, distrust or fear to enter in......

A healthy friendship is based on mutual trust and respect and encourages the other person to grow. The best relationships are transparent and free from fear.

Shall we count the friends we have that come close to filling this very real, very practical need? Shall we tell a friend today how much he or she means to us? Shall we thank God for friendships? I think I will.....