God knew exactly what he was doing when he brought all these sweet, crazy friends into my life. It’s important to support each other in every way, cover each other in prayer everyday, and always, always, always be able to laugh at yourself – and if you can’t, we’ll laugh, hard, for you. 

Few examples that have popped up in the last couple of days (without naming any names):

My germaphobe of a best friend – we’re taking doesn’t sit on the toilet anywhere, prides herself on her hovering ability, and goes through hand sanitizer like it’s water – found herself in flip flops, at the airport, going through security. Barefoot in a public space about sent her over the edge, but we were there to laugh her back to reality. 

Another example: a super protective, loving best frannn was so involved in getting me situated on a recent flight that she lost her phone. We dinged it, about 10 times, and could not for the life of us find it. We could hear it, dug through both of our carry ons and purses and pockets and could not find it. Finally resolved to give up because people were impatiently waiting for us to move out of the aisle, my best frannn sat down and found her phone under the seat in front of us. Laughing, laughing, laughing. 

On the same trip, my very, very skinny sidekick almost became a resident of Boston because he didn’t keep up. 

And even better, as we were boarding to come home my best frannn realized she didn’t grab her ipad after security. Full on sprint, lots of begging, searching, pinging and tracking she admitted defeat and retreated to the plane so she didn’t have to walk home. We discussed the likelihood that it would of course get returned, people aren’t that mean, and what else we could do to find it. She called when she got home, close enough to connect to her home wifi, and her suitcase was going insane from the zillion of pings we sent the ipad that was safely packed away. 

This last example has a backstory:

In 2014, we went to Costa Rica without doing much research, just excited to be away. We were standing in line waiting to enter the country and one of my amazing best friends asked, “is Costa Rica an island?” Hysterical laughing took over, especially after it was clear that not one of us knew the answer.  

So, flash forward to a recent trip and while were at the airport I saw a familiar face (surprise, surprise). Our conversation went like this:

Me: “are y’all headed to Boston?”

Her: “yes, then to Portugal for a week”

my response, and wish I was lying:

“oh, I’ve never been to Spain”

Laughing is cathartic, and having sweet friends to share those laughs with is even better. I thank God every day for my amazing support system that laughs with me, at me, and builds me up when I’d rather do anything but laugh. 

“Friendship carries all this mess together, so that you don’t have to hide, so that you carry it together…Because that’s what we do: we carry the mess together. Your mess is mine.” – Shauna Niequist, Present Over Perfect