“We’ll be friends forever, won’t we, Pooh?” asked Piglet?  “Even longer,” Pooh answered.

And that’s what I thought. That the friends I was investing in along the way – the people I shared my life with, raised my kids with, started churches with, ate all the meals with, shared my highs and my lows with, grieved with, celebrated with and shared the foxhole with – that we would be friends for even longer than forever.

But what I learned somewhere along the way is that not all friendships are meant to be Pooh and Piglet.  

I’m not sure where I first encountered it, but at some point  I was introduced to this idea:   there are friends for a reason, friends for a season and friends for a lifetime. And what I now know that I did not always know is that you don’t know who your life-time friends are until you get to the end of your life and see, not who comes to your funeral, but who sits the death-watch with your family. But there’s the thing, hopefully there will be many, many of your friends for a reason and friends for a season who come to the funeral to tell that part of  your story and celebrate your life. They all count.  

Friends for a reason. Friends for a season. Friends for a lifetime. Though those words may not shake your world – they sort of did mine. Because as we all know, friends come and go from our lives. The BFF from grade school who always played with you at recess and who decided with you what you should wear to school the next day so you could be twinsies. The one from middle school who you had sleepovers with every weekend and talked to on the phone every day when you got home from school. The one from high school who you told about all your crushes and wrote in your yearbook the same thing that you wrote in hers –  that you would be friends forever. The one who was a bridesmaid at your wedding and you at hers and you shared the joys and challenges of early married life. The one who had kids the same age as yours and you bonded over potty training and teething. The one you called when your teenager didn’t come home and you had no idea what to do. All of them. The BFFs who were closer than family for a time, who you invited into the deepest and darkest part of your life, who shared in all the big moments and the small ones, who got into the rat hole of life with you, as Anne Lamott says, and is out there walking around  in the world with a matching Winnie the Pooh and Piglet tattoo on her shoulder. (Well, okay maybe not that last one :).   

But then one day, or more likely over lots of days, sometimes for no discernible reason, the friendship cools or falls apart, or maybe life just moves on and gets in the way or maybe you have a falling out and each go your own way. And you realize, these were NOT lifetime friends as you had supposed – but only friends for a reason or for a season. But now that reason has been fulfilled or the season has passed. So what does that say about the friendship:  Was it real?  Was it authentic?  Did it matter?

And what I want to say now is YES.  They all counted.

I would say most of my friendships started as “friends for a reason”.  We went to school together. We worked together. We were on a team together to start a church. We were in a small group together.  Our kids played together. We had shared interests.  And in that reason, we found common cause and affinity.  Sometimes, once the reason was past, the friendship wasn’t the same. Life moved on and demanded our attention and we made other friends “for a reason”.  But some of those relationships evolved into “friends for a season”.  Our kids grew up and maybe apart, but we stayed connected and our relationship deepened to be about more than what we had in common. The project we were both working on was completed, but our friendship outgrew the project and we did other things together. The small group ended but we continued to get together for tea and  to share our lives. And so, while the reason no longer existed, our friendship transitioned. And some of those “friends for a season” lasted for years before they ran their course – before that season was over and we drifted apart and away. However, some of them have grown and deepened and matured and maybe we will be friends for a lifetime – but we don’t know that yet because we haven’t come to the end of the story. But here’s what I do know – all of these friendships were real and they all mattered and they all helped me become the person I am today.

I think it must be said that not all friendships end well. One or both parties come away wounded, scarred and bloody. But this I believe. . .  even those friendships can serve a purpose. I also know this: sometimes they are restored and redeemed. Not always. . .  but sometimes.  Understanding that not all friendships are going to be “friends for a lifetime” has relieved me of the burden of trying to make them so. And that is not to say that I haven’t grieved some of those friendships that didn’t survive the reason or the season, but it has helped me to celebrate them for what they were – not for what they weren’t. 

I have been blessed to have many friends over my 71 years, a handful of them perhaps will last a lifetime (if you’re reading this, I hope you know who you are). Let me tell you about two of them.

I think it was 1976 when I first got to know Amy Oliver at the University of Kansas I was a young mother of two –  soon to be three. She was a college coed who came to a Bible Study with her boyfriend and indicated that she was interested in getting together to talk more about spiritual things. We went for coffee, talked some about Jesus, some about our lives and we began to get to know one another. Before we parted, I asked her if she’d like to pray with me. She prayed first, saying something like, “Thank you, God for this beautiful afternoon. . . “.  “Amen”, I said quietly, agreeing  with her. But apparently it was loud enough that she heard and she stopped abruptly, saying nothing more. So I picked it up and continued the prayer. It would not be till years later that she would tell me, “when you said, ‘amen’, I thought that meant my turn had ended and  my prayer was over.”  Nice job, Sharon.

But even after I so rudely interrupted her prayer, we continued to build our friendship. She went on to graduate from college and began her teaching career. She was our son’s kindergarten teacher and when after a few years, we decided to homeschool, she became my resident elementary school consultant, calming my fears and assuring me that all kids wrote their ‘b’s” and “d’s” backwards from time to time.  

It was Amy who left a bright, shiny red tricycle on our front porch for our three year old’s birthday with the note that said, “to Tabi from Jesus” and built the faith of a little girl who had prayed and prayed for just such a gift and whose parents had no idea where they would get the money to buy it. Again, it wouldn’t be until decades later – when I was looking through Tabi’s baby book and recognized the writing on the card as Amy’s – that I understood the role she had played. It would not be the last time she was the hands and feet of Jesus to families who needed Him to show up.

In 1979, she would be on a church-planting team with us to Champaign, Illinois. She taught school in the day time and held Bible studies in the dorms in the evenings. We cooked countless meals for  hungry college students – she taught me to make hopple-kopple (a dish with fried potatoes, eggs, and cheese) – and it was our go-to dinner for drop-in guests, of which there were many.  She took my kids to the corner convenience store for “comfort candy” when I was in desperate need of a break and kept a limitless supply of red-hots with her that she doled out to outstretched little hands. To my older four she was like a really cool older sister. One season gave way to another and the seasons changed, but the friendship grew.

In 1986, we were ready for a new adventure. Our family was moving to the suburbs of DC and, long story short, Amy and a few others moved with us. We were more spread out here, it was harder to see each other as often and life was just faster and different. When she brought a young man over to meet the family, suffice it to say that my daughters were less than welcoming and more than a little protective, perhaps seeing him as competition for the affection and attention she had showered on them for so many years. It was a new season and it remained to be seen where  the friendship would land.  

Then, in 1989 we embarked on yet another church plant – this time in upper Montgomery County Maryland and once again, Amy joined the team – this time along with her new husband Kirk. For awhile the relationship was rife with adjustment, misunderstanding and disappointment, and yet we powered through it – talking, forgiving, letting go, holding on, and talking and forgiving some more. Amy is one of the most loyal people I know and she will fight hard to stay connected and committed to the people she loves. I have a lot to learn from her and I credit her for getting us through this season.   

When her first child was born, I got to be the one to give her her first bath. Amy taught my son in his first year of school and encouraged and supported a new and inexperienced homeschool mom, and I now I got to come along side this veteran educator and watch her own children flourish under her tutelage as she taught them at home. When I directed her teenagers in high school plays, it was like seeing their mother all over again at that age:  artsy, creative and so ready for fun and adventure! This season brought us another gift:  her youngest was born in the same year as my oldest grandson (the son of her former kindergarten student) and they became fast friends until the Marine Corps moved them away from each other which was as sad a day as I have ever seen.

And now in this season we find ourselves with gray hair and grown children (that kindergartner is almost 50 years old and she is invited to his wife’s 40th birthday getaway) and shared heartaches. We have grieved with one another over the death of parents and friends, have commiserated with the other in the hard places, and celebrated in the spaces of jubilee. She knows what year we moved where and what year my fourth daughter was born and the year we got our Beagle and what the house number was on First Street and my third grandson’s middle name. Because her brain has an unlimited capacity to remember such things, while mine . . . . well, not so much. But more important, she remembers our stories.  She reminds me of who I was, and who I am and when I forget, she reminds me of who I want to be.

And then there’s Peggy. Back in ’86 when we moved to Maryland, it was Paul and I and the kids, Amy, Marna, and Joe.  We were coming from a small church where everybody knew everybody into a big church where we knew a handful of people, and as I said,  even our little team was dispersed and scattered. It felt like I was starting over because I was starting over and to say I was overwhelmed is putting it mildly. Everyone here was so busy and lived so far away from each each other compared to our small church in the mid-west and the church was so big. And though they were friendly and welcoming, I felt alone. For the first time ever, Paul went to work at an office with a couple dozen other leaders (instead of his “in home” office where he had always worked) so even he wasn’t as available. But a guy named Dave Smith, who also worked in the office, had offered to help us move in and I think the first Sunday I went to church, his wife came up to me and said, “Hi, I’m Peggy Smith.” And that was the beginning.

Dave was the director of the home-schooling academy sponsored by the church. He and Peggy homeschooled their children as did we:  the reason the friendship began. We spent time together around the kids – their oldest Andy was the age of our fourth-born, Sarah. Our oldest daughter Tabitha started to baby-sit for them and the youngest of their tribe at the time gave her the name that would stick for years “the Batha”. Our youngest and their youngest were born only days apart and over the years became more like cousins or siblings:  scrapping, making up, fighting, playing, defending, attacking. I remember one day going to pick Fletch up from Sunday School and Peggy had him and Ellen outside preaching to the two four year olds who had been squabbling about something during class:  “You two are just going to have to figure this out because neither of you is going anywhere and chances are you’re going to be together for a lot more years – so you’re gonna have to to learn to get along. You’re family. Now both of you say you’re sorry so we can go get lunch.”

By 1989, when we were ready to plant Cedarbrook Church, Dave and Peggy and their family were one of the handful of people (along with Kirk and Amy) who said, sign me up – we’re in! So another reason was born and bled into the next season and we were all busy with the starting of a new church and all of the challenges  and work and fun and stories that came with that.

And then came the cancer. When the youngest were only babies, Dave was diagnosed with a rare kind of leukemia and the prognosis was not good and this brought us to a new reason for the friendship.  We cried together, we prayed together, and it got very real very fast. Cancer has a way of stripping away the masks we wear and the games we play and breaks us down to the real us. And this is where we found ourselves in the season of cancer:  vulnerable and raw and broken.

Then, after the cancer was gone and life had returned to its normal chaos, Dave said to Paul, “I’m looking for somebody to head up the high school program for the Academy. Might Sharon be interested?” And Paul said,” I don’t think so.” And of course, he was completely wrong – I was interested and I did want the job and that carried my friendship with Peggy, who oversaw the elementary program, into the next season. We would be working together and in the years to come there would be countless staff meetings, and graduations, and promotion nights, and Thursday Classes and so much, much more. 

In 1992, the first year I worked for the Academy, the Main Stage play was born when another mom came to me and said, “let’s help the kids put on a play”  and I said. “Count me out” . . .  but of course, that’s exactly what we did.  For the next 20 years.

The problem in that first year was I knew we had enough girls to fill out the cast but I was lacking in the boy department. So I said to Peggy, who had four sons, “Tell your boys they need to audition.”  She said they didn’t want to be in the play and I said, “You’re their mother; you can make them”,  so she signed them up for an audition time. When their time came and no Smith boys appeared I called Peggy.  “Where are they?”  “Well, “she said, “they’re hiding down in the woods and I can’t get them to come out.”  What kind of mother are you? I asked her.  What kind of friend are you?! But I forgave her.  

I forgave her mainly because I needed her to paint a backdrop of the Swiss Alps (did I mention she is an artist to her core?). The boys thought they might like to help with that. And then they agreed that they would serve on the stage crew when performance week came around and by the cast party, they had been bitten by the bug and would henceforth be an integral part of the Academy theatre productions and they became some of the best actors I ever worked with.   

For the next 20 years, Peggy was the set designer and builder for  some of the most professional, beautiful sets of any high school production anywhere.  For twenty years we worked together: creating, building a team, and telling stories.  It was both a reason for and a season of our friendship. And I loved it.

The story is too long to tell (this is already longer than I intended) but at some point along the way, Amy, Peggy, and I became a unit of friendship. It wasn’t Peggy and Sharon or Sharon and Amy or Peggy and Amy, it was Peggy and Amy and Sharon. And we celebrated birthdays and Christmases, weddings and anniversaries and we continue to get together as often as we can for tea and just catching up. We share our lives. We share the hard parts, the funny parts, the ugly parts and the beautiful parts. We carry for one another what is too difficult to carry alone and we tell the stories of our past and dream of our futures. We recount the reasons, the seasons and at least up to this point are living out the lifetime part of our friendship. And who knows?  Maybe there is a Pooh and Piglet tattoo somewhere in our future.  

P.S.  If you have read to the end of this ((I know it’s long!) and are feeling sad because maybe you can’t name any “life-time friends,” this is for you:  That friend with whom you are building a relationship  because you have discovered a commonality – invest in it. That friend who is with you in this season of your life but may not travel with you into the next one – make the most of it.  Because, in the end, they all count!