Friendship...expires?

“Forget what hurt you in the past, but never forget what it taught you.”

I saw this on a placard today and it was as if the universe was shouting out to me, “HEY AYZLYNN! I know you have been struggling with some hurt feelings lately, this is for you!!!!”

Have you ever struggled with feeling like your friendships have a shelf life? Sometimes I get so scared to let a new friend into my heart because at the end of the day, so many have walked away from a relationship I hold dear. I moved growing up, a few different times, and always at these horribly pivotal moments in my life.  First I was uprooted right after the completion of elementary school, talk about a problem…a new school AND puberty? What a disaster.

I survived.

Then, in the height of my teen age years when I felt like life was stable, I was uprooted again.  Talk about a disaster…high school in a new place when the girls are generally at their utmost cruelest stage of life.

I survived.

Unfortunately, a lot of my friendships did not.  Moving is hard on a friendship and although I created relationships in all the places I lived, only some of them survived.

I am grateful for the woman who has travelled this world far and wide, and no matter how long it’s been or if she was in New Zealand or Thailand, when I am next to her it is as though time has stood still waiting for our reunion. I love her so much. I appreciate her closeness in my life right now.

I am grateful for the man who became my first and only best friend of the opposite sex. I am so glad that no matter how much time passes or how cold St. Paul or Laramie gets, our hearts are always warm when we pick up the phone and chat.  My heart has a special place for his in it.

I am grateful for a beautiful gal who did exciting things like join a sorority and work in Disney World and spread her wings so far out that I was worried she’d fly away and never come back. Yet, our friendship lasted because we never let each other go, and I am so glad time has landed her just a few hours south of me.

I am grateful for my theatre friend who gets to travel all around the country, coast to coast, but always makes time to see me when she is close.  I had the wonderful privilege of working with one of my best girls when we were young and those memories are so treasured in my heart.

I am grateful for my friend who I know I knew before this life, we just match so well. She is a fabulous cook and makes the best gifts and makes me laugh harder than any person outside of my own family ever has. She reached out to me at time when I needed it most, when she was new here and I should have been the one doing the reaching.

I am grateful for my soul sister who knits me adorable things.  I never needed someone so much as I needed her when she came into my life in just the right capacity at just the right time. A broken heart has never been healed so carefully and completely.

I am grateful for my Laramie girls who I get to watch Grey’s with and came to my birthday party and made me feel like I belonged somewhere again…and taught me to craft – it was no easy task.

I am grateful for the few girls from an old job that I can still email and have lunch with and miss them every day!

I am so, so grateful for a woman who I get to call my best friend and my family who sends me hilarious birthday cards and has 3 hour Skype dates with me. Of all the moving that has taken place in both our lives, the one that resulted in the two of us no longer sharing the same town was the hardest. It’s as though we lived the same lives and our paths were just destined to cross.

I am lucky to be able to call so many members of my family friends.  I am so blessed to be able to say that I have cousins that are the siblings of my heart and would do anything for me. I am privileged to have parents who are my friends in my adult life and to have in-laws who have welcomed me so warmly.

I needed this reminder today.  You see, for every successful friendship I have been blessed with I have seen a handful of failed ones.  For every person who has made my heart full, there have been handfuls that have crushed it. I think my friendships mean so much to me because I moved when I was young, and I didn’t have the luxury of being friends with the people I graduated with for the last 12 years of our lives.  I’m not saying “woe is me” - just that it shaped me into being more appreciative of friendships, the real ones, where you can point out the ugly and survive through the night, where you can love through the dark days as well as the bright ones, where you understand it’s a two way street, just like any other relationship.

I needed to remind myself today of the awesome and lasting friendships I have established in order to lessen the sting of losing one. No one is perfect, myself included, but the loss came as a surprise and still hurt my heart. So, I’m letting go of what hurt me in the past, but I am remembering what it taught me: a friendship is just like any other relationship and it must be worked at by both parties, it must be important to both parties and it must be nurtured by both parties, it won’t survive if it is one sided and the best way to handle it if the other person has to leave is to love them anyway, and let them. It will hurt you less in the long run. I hope though, that if any of my friends ever find the day where they think I'm not doing enough, they tell me so I can fix it because I really do value them and they are each precious to me.

Love Is Spoken Here

Before I set out writing this blog, I want to put out a disclaimer that I have good parents whom I love dearly. They taught me many things and they have each been a rock for me at different times in my life. I am a child of divorce though, and while they were both fantastic at never bad mouthing the other and offering up ways for my relationships with them to be maintained, I still did have to split my home. I was blessed, I am not saying, "Woe is me!" I had a slew of loving aunts and uncles. That isn't what this is about.  My mother once told me I'd find no finer example of love and unconditional commitment than in my paternal grandparents.  That's right, she told me to look to my Dad's parents as an example of what a marriage should be, and she has never been more right in her life.

Sheesh I haven't even gotten to the nitty gritty emotions in my heart and I'm already teary eyed...

When I was a pre-teen (and pretty much the most angry, chip-on-shoulder, hard-to-handle girl in the land), my living situation changed and I was able to live with my father for a time.  During that time I was able to forge a relationship with him, which would be important later, but not truly come to fruition until my early 20's. You see, what happened during that time that was more important than my time with my Dad, was my time with my Grandparents.

I was blessed to have many cousins and siblings around and that group of us were so blessed to have Grandpa and Grandma only yards away from our front doors. They were our second set of parents.  They were a shining example of triumph over adversity and faith in love.  They were a home cooked meal.  They were a shoulder to cry on. They were a pillar of strength built over many years of a marriage full of commitment and compromise.  They were a confidence booster in the darkest moments of being an awkward young woman.  They were wise words spoken quietly in the middle of the night - welcome to the ears of anyone who sought them out.  They were music. They were laughter. They were loud and obnoxious and quiet and spiritual and calm and hilarious and comforting.  You see, what they are, is love.

I have many, many blessed memories of them during those short years of my life.  Sometimes when the real world is really getting to me, I close my eyes and go back to that time, that home, that love so readily available every second of the day.  But to discuss them all would be to ramble, and what I want to celebrate today is their love story.

Sixty five years, nine children, 30-ish grandchildren, 70-ish great-grandchildren, a house fire, a war, many tragedies and many triumphs later, they still sit together like this:

I have never, ever in my whole entire life heard my grandparents quarrel at one another. I'm sure they did when they were younger and I'm sure they still have disagreements, but they do them privately. They taught me that what happens between spouses is between JUST spouses.  You don't talk bad about your husband or wife and you don't talk down to one another, especially in front of others.

They taught me to never stop holding hands and to unite our hands to enrich lives, to bless our loved ones, to serve the Lord.

They taught me that love is quiet.  It takes no grand gestures, no big houses, no huge diamonds.  It is a quiet roar at the end of every day knowing you are spending your life with the person you love most in this world.

I admire this woman for her strength, her wit, her example of how to love and be loyal to the man you love, and I love her for always, always, always loving me.

My grandfather taught me about quiet love.  He is the master of quiet love.  He was always the ultimate decision maker, but never made a choice without talking to my grandma.  He holds the Priesthood.  He told me someday (after crying over some ridiculous heart ache) that in time, I would find a man like him, and although I didn't believe him at the time, he sure proved me wrong.

When I got engaged, I got a lot of advice. None that I hold in higher esteem than the advice that I received from my grandparents. They told me:

*Say "I love you" every day.

*Dance together.(That was Grandpa all the way!)

*Make all your decisions together AND make them prayerfully.

*Talk to each other, every single day.

*Pray together.

*"Wear it often." (My grandmother in regards to lingerie)

*Don't nag

*Don't take each other for granted.

*Go to church.

*Be kind to one another.

*Laugh.  Laugh a lot she said.

At the end of the day, it isn't the worldly things that matter. While I admit I lust after a big fancy house with columns and a wrap around porch, I build my own car on websites, I totally look at expensive shoes, I also know, that in my hear of hearts, the goal that matters most in this life is to live a love story like this one.

At the end of the day, in 65 years, I hope I have a granddaughter that finds my example to be as wonderfully powerful and full of love as I find theirs to be. For that love story shaped me into the very woman I wanted to be.

"And the things they teach are crystal clear, for love is spoken here."