Thank You, Friends

There are a handful of decisions that change everything. Looking in the rearview mirror of your life, you can spot a choice you made that led to this, while chances are a different choice would have led to a significantly different that. Where you live, how you spend your time, whether to work outside your home, whom you married or didn’t, whether to have kids, whether you go to church. Just as Annie Dillard sagely said, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” the choices we make accumulate into a life.

Once upon a time, we moved to this town and settled into a house. After many months, Marcus and I made a decision to invite a few couples for a wine and cheese party. I vaguely remember handwriting invitations asking people to bring a favorite bottle of wine and dropping the invitations in the mail. I also vaguely remember a long Google search to learn how to pair wine and cheeses, due to the fact I knew nothing about either.

Roughly 14 years later, these friendships are like roots that keep us planted. Whenever my husband and I imagine life in a different town, we cannot imagine life without these friends. They have helped us move to a new house, they have cared for our kids, brought us homemade food in busy and stressful seasons, held us in prayer, vacationed with us, and have frankly made us better humans. It is a profound privilege to be welcomed into someone’s life, and a generous gift to discover mutual encouragement and grace.

We seem to be getting older, this group of friends. One by one, our kids graduate and move away and through each change, we are steadied by our friendship roots. Last night, we celebrated Friendsgiving. I saved time and stamps by texting them an invitation. I asked them to bring both food and a story. Using Priya Parker’s 15 Toasts, I nervously asked if they would come with an origin story from their own life, and suggested bonus points if it was a story their spouse hadn’t heard.

We drew back the curtain on our lives and raised our glasses to our moms, to healing, to choices that led to something good. And we raised our glasses to decisions that led to a moment of friends gathered around a table. I use the word decision, and yet I am not certain that word fits.

Another look in the rearview mirror suggests God has a way of surrounding you with the people you need at just the right time. Although we did make a decision to invite people to our home so long ago, a decision that fills me with gratitude, God had already brought these particular people to this town, just like us.

Trusted friends are worth more than anything money could ever buy, even though it is a risk to open the door and let them see your life for real. What you may discover in doing so is that life requires good company. And toasts.