Author: Brandy Gibson, Creative Director
Through Thick & Thin - Part 2
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“Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. For if either falls, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up.”  
                                                                                                                                         —Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Making friends used to be effortless. In elementary school, I used to think most people were my friends. Everything was low effort—I was around them all the time through school, sports, and 4-H. Just being close in age to kids in the neighborhood made natural friendships. It was all so simple.

Then my family moved to West Virginia when I was 11. I left all my friends in Maryland that summer and for the first time had a real sense of being lonely. The middle school years are hard anyway, but now I was the new kid. I was a nerdy, lanky, quiet kid who made an easy target for teasing and bullying. That could have been how it stayed for what felt like the rest of my existence. But thankfully it wasn’t. 

My safety net was the friendships I had made in the months before school started. A family from the church we started attending saw us and knew that we were out on our own. One week that summer, they just showed up in our driveway and introduced themselves and their kids who were close in age to me and my brother. They would have us over and invite us to activities that they were attending and introduce us to others. This simple act of friendship has had one of the greatest impacts on my life because it brought me my best friends who would support me when life got to the “thick” part.

“On Sunday, Pastor Josh spoke to us about friendship. He quoted Adele Calhoun saying, “Friends are not a dime a dozen… Friends require a degree of intentionality and self-donating love… Friends mutually and naturally supply support, sharing, counsel, fun, encouragement, growth, and a sense of being uniquely chosen and valued.”

I love that Jesus demonstrated what friendship should look like, and that friendship is written about in the Bible. In John 15:12 we are given this command, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Speaking of love, 1 Corinthians 13:7 says: “[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 

Those 6th-grade friendships are a picture of this love. These two best friends I met in the summer of 1996 would be there through taunting in school and through becoming adults. They stood beside me when I got married. They sat next to me when my marriage was in crisis. They were there when we became new moms. They were there through hospital stays. Lost jobs. Losing parents. When life is hard and we feel like we are failing at every turn. Each stage of life has been made better, sweeter, and stronger because we aren’t alone.

If you see someone who is new, isolated, or in need of support, “just show up” in whatever way that makes sense. You never know, stepping out of your comfort zone and into someone's life might be just what they need; you might be exactly who God wants to use in their life.