True Friends

Disclaimer: I am rather wordy, if you don't want to read my ramblings, just skip to the bottom for the gist of this post.


This summer has been a very different than other summers I have had.  Not even close to the worst summer I have had, that's for sure....  But this summer, all of my best friends are gone.  I do still have other friends that are here still, just none of my really close friends.  Aubrey graduated and moved back home. Nancyann was going to come back with me after the family reunion, but after being home she realized how much she missed it and decided to stay home all summer.  And Julie is gone for the summer as well.  Those three girls have been my best friends for a while now.  Marshall had been out here, but he went back home at Christmas and is now in basic training. Phill and Crystal Littlewood left at the beginning of last school year for Massachusetts and Chris Hills transferred up to BYU-I last semester. Until just this week, Josh Foster and his wife Christie had been out here as well, but they just left to go back to Missouri for a pit stop before heading to Georgia for grad school.  With my work schedule, I don't usually get to do much socializing outside of Sunday's, which is ok I guess.  At least I have some time that I get to interact with people not on the computer or the phone.  But my birthday was this past week.  The past two birthdays have been lots of fun.  When I turned 24, I finally had a group of close friends out here at school for the first time (aside from when I was in China) and so we had lots of fun.  Last year we did a fun camping trip with everyone that was here, and since it was just after Marshall and Nancyann got out here, it was a blast!  Like I said, I do have some friends out here still.  So I figured I would invite a bunch of people to go to the tumble gym with me and have a party there.  I sent out like 30-40 invites in facebook (which I know isn't exactly a sure bet to getting people to show up)  I texted a few friends as well.  The only solid 'yes' I got was from Josh.  There were a few of my better friends who had valid reasons for not showing up, being out of town, work, etc.  But it end up just being Josh, Christie, their little girl and Josh's little brother who's been out here all summer and I there at the tumble gym.  At first I was kind of disappointed that no one else showed up, but then I started thinking about how much fun I was having with Josh and his crew.  I have long known that I would rather hang out in boring ole' Provo with a group of people I love than travel the world alone.  But I also realized that I would much rather spend the day with one really close friend than with a large group of friendly people who I'm not very close with.  Later that night there was a group of people in my ward playing signs who invited me to come play with them, which ended up being a lot of fun.  But like I said I have come to really appreciate the value of even just one close friend.

So, basically what I'm saying is I am so grateful for the awesome friends that I have, especially those that are closest to me.  When I went to Massachusetts over Christmas break, I got to see Phill and Crystal and we had almost our whole tight group of friends back together from the previous year.  Even though it had been a few months since we had seen each other, it was as if no time had passed.  Those are the types of friends that you can't replace.  I have been so blessed to make some really close friends and even though I don't see them very often (especially this summer) I'm still so glad that I have them as friends.