Friends, Hearts and Hands

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” --Henri Nouwen

Over the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a "friend". The dictionary definition of "friend" gives us a fairly simplistic, structured defintion. Such as, " a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard", or "a person who is on good terms with another; someone who is not hostile." I don't know about you, but I'd like to think a friend is more than this. While I think it's so important for these characteristics to be present in a healthy relationship, I also would like to think of a friend as something far greater than that.
I would never classify myself as "popular", or ever be the girl that would walk down the hall and know every single head that strolled by. However, it becomes easy for me to classify people as my "best friends" without even thinking about how well I know them, or their hearts for that matter. In the last few days, I've really come to realize a lot of the characteristics I appreciate about the people closest to me. For me, Henri Nouwen pins the nail on the head with the quote above. Relationships are not about the people that we have to "fix" us. On the contrary, they are the people who enter into suffering and pain with us. Sometimes it's surprising who we choose to enter into that pain with.
While some would argue that the word friend is used too often and too loosely, I would simply argue, that we need to define the term for ourselves. For me, a friend is someone who knows me, who does not fear when I say "confession" and even further, who accepts me, laughs at me, challenges me, or loves me regardless of what comes next. Someone who knows me well enough to know that when I get quiet, it either means I'm tired, or hurt. Someone who knows the difference between the two. Someone who knows that I LOVE being the favourite, and instead of making fun of that or treating it like its nothing, allows me to be the favourite and looks out for that insecurity in me. Someone who will know that when I say I want to be alone, that really, I don't...EVER. Most of all, I love knowing that the people closest to me, love my heart and are willing to hurt with it, laugh with it, cry with it, and hold it.
I think what this does for me, is provide me with confidence in my relationships. And this confidence produces and empowers me to go and enter into pain and joy with others. Henri Nouwen also writes about enlarging the inner community of your heart. I think for awhile, I would say that I had a large inner community, but I was fooling myself. Since, I have learned from those around me, who have taken my heart, wrapped their hands around it, stopped the bleeding when pain is present, laughed when joy was evident, that creating an inner community can be even harder than we think. But it is through this inner community that we begin to see the reality of who we are and the worth and value of others.
It is because of you, that I can find freedom in my heart and in yours, that I can experience your pain and you can experience mine, that I can experience your joy and you can experience mine. That I can experience your love, grace and compassion, and you can experience mine. More than this, that I can fully and completely experience your Christ, and you can experience mine. It is through that that authentic and beautiful community is created and united.
Thank you for your hands, that so quickly hold my heart and never ever let it go.

"We are called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding"--Donald Miller