friends

There is an email that resurfaces periodically concerning friends. It speaks of friends for a season or a day or lifetime. I can't remember all of it, though I often share it when it comes up because I love what it says.
I have been blessed with a fair number of friends. Some were friends for a day, some for a season and some have been there at every turn. Thank you each and every one!
The reason I have been thinking about this is that DD 2 was bemoaning the loss of contact with someone with whom she really liked sharing ideas. She once described this person as her commaratiade - someone who understood her soul. This was not sexual, but spiritual, and it hurts that he has now cut her from his life. She knows that he is going through some tough times, and she would like to there for him, but he has isolated himself completely from the times they knew each other. He has become a friend of a season.
This is very hard for her to understand. At her age I didn't understand either. You were a friend or you weren't. But sometimes a person is as good a friend as they are able to be and that ability may change with their life and what happens and with the maturity they discover.
And we change. We just do. An event or philosophy that was vitally important when we are 18 is almost laughable at 40. This is not to downplay the importance of friends or of the friends that you make each day. One of these may become a 'bosom buddy.'
I also believe that you need to feed friendships. And tend to do a lousy job of that. I will call someone up and chat for an hour and then have no contact with that person for another year or more. That is not nutritious. That is barely life support. And how can these friends know they are important to you if you do not maintain contact?
It is now 10 days later and I have just read what I wrote and I still stand by it. I am still a lousy friend to many of my friends - and some of them are great friends to me. I am blessed with many people who actually want to hear from and about me. And people who I care about too. It is a wonderful thing to find you have more than one friend in the world.