Soul friend

By Tyler Tankersley

When I was in high school, I had lots and lots of friends.

Friendship was fairly easy when your schedule artificially placed you in close proximity to your peers.

Each day, I had at least one friend in each of my seven classes; I had friends at my extracurricular activities; I had friends in my church youth group; and I had friends who with I would spend my weekends.

For some of us, friendship is easy in school. Nobody really warned me that friendship would be much harder as an adult. Work, marriage, children, housework, yard work and all of the other responsibilities that accompany adulthood can sometimes make it difficult to find the time to invest in friendships.

I think that friendship is difficult in adulthood because many of us are afraid of admitting to our vulnerability of needing companions in our lives. When we greet people we say, "Hey. How are you?" That has transitioned into a synonym for "Hello," rather than being a genuine question. In our cultural rules, the proper response to the greeting is "Fine" or "Good" not an honest answer. Perhaps we need to be more willing to admit when we find ourselves in need of friendship.

I'll go first: I need friends in my life. My wife is far wiser than I and she knows me better than I could ever hope to know myself. She knows that my extroverted personality needs to spend time with other people to feel energized and healthy. She knows that I love her, that I love our three amazing children, and that I love our home. However, each weekend she tells me to make sure that I plan at least one "friend outing" out of the house. She knows that I need that. She knows that it feeds my soul to spend time with a friend.

There is a Celtic saying: "Anyone without a soul friend is a body without a head." In Celtic spirituality, there is the belief that friendship is as necessary to good health as water, food and oxygen. To deprive ourselves of friendship is to mistreat our souls.

A few months ago I posted on Facebook that I was reading a book. Another local pastor commented that he was reading the same book. We agreed to gather together to discuss the ideas therein. We discovered that there were a couple of others we knew who were interested in the book's topics. We began meeting on Thursday mornings at Cup n' Cork to unpack the ideas together. What began as an affinity group of peers has transformed into a circle of friends. I have nearly cried during our conversations, laughed until I've spit coffee, and been blow away by my friends' wisdom. I had to miss one of our meetings recently and I found myself feeling drained because of not having that time with my friends.

C.S. Lewis wrote: "Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too?'" If you are like me and you need friendship for your mental, emotional and spiritual health, keep your eyes open to what new paths of companionship God might be laying before you. Because, if you are willing to open yourself up, you might find someone who says, "What! You too?"