Don't put my friends in a box!

My kids make me laugh. One of the things they're constantly asking me is "who is your best friend?" When I tell them their dad, they don't think that's a good enough answer. Their response is always "but who's your best GIRL friend?" That's a hard one to answer. How do I answer that when God has blessed me with so many different types of friendships? I admit, I think that I have a lot of acquaintances, but I have some really good, really deep, I'd be crushed if it ended kind of friendships.

Another thing the kids like to do is to "replace" my old friends with new ones. They'll say "so Mrs. Dalenea is like Mrs. O, right?" or "Mrs. Janet is like Mrs. Best." No, Mrs. Dalenea is Mrs. Dalenea and Mrs. O is Mrs. O., Mrs. Janet is herself and Mrs. Best is her ownself as well. Sometimes I meet someone who reminds me of someone, but no friend is ever replaceable by another. I miss my Canadian girlfriends dearly, even the ones like Kari and Steph who live on the mainland and I see maybe once or twice a year, and it's been the regular amount of time that we normally go without seeing each other but I still miss them. I think it's because I know I can't just take a ferry to pop over for a day or more.

I am thankful for the girlfriends God's given me here. Each one fills a need and I think I do the same for them. I've mentioned it before, but the friendships here seem to gel faster, without the circling and wariness that sometimes women tend to do before deciding someone else is safe enough to befriend. I think that still happens, but when you find someone you can relate to here, I think one tends to jump into the relationship with less caution. It must have something to do with the fact that we're all new or at least have all been new at some point, and that we all know what it's like to feel like you're all alone in a really strange, foreign (literally) place.

I hope that my children are learning through my friendships that life is not static, yet you can still maintain old friendships and make new ones. There's no need to put my friends in a box (then they can't breathe!) or to put a limit on how many friends one can have. You can have a party with 2 or 3 people, but it's so much livelier with many more!

Thanks for reading.