A weekly highlight for us is dinner with our sons and their families. Be it a celebratory turkey dinner or a simple bowl of homemade soup and fresh baked bread, the thrill is in being together. Far more important than the food is the joy of having our three year old granddaughter living near us. Now that the two older granddaughters are studying at universities in two separate provinces, we cherish the laughter, chatter and time spent with Lucy.
I admit it, I love people. I love being surrounded by family and friends and I highly value the mutual support that comes from knowing there are those who are covering my back, as I am doing for them. But how to describe a friend without sounding trite or syrupy? To find the answer I turn to my trusty Internet for some definitions; here are a few powerful quotes:
Aristotle remarked that friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. When I read Bill Watterson's remark, "Things are never quite as scary when you've got a best friend," I couldn't help but whisper an amen. Thomas Edison put it so well when he asserted "I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favour of the kings of the world." No greater gift than that.
There are many more of these succinct definitions of a word that carries so much emotion but one of my favourites has got to be this nugget from Oscar Wilde: "True friends stab you in the front." It also reminds me of something a very wise man observed thousands of years ago: "A friend loves at all times, and is born, as is a brother, for adversity." (Proverbs 17:17 - Amplified Version)
How grateful I am for true friends, be they blood relatives or not. Amen.
