Meet Dawn. We share a cubicle wall at work as well as a deep friendship. Surprising, because we’re pretty different. Dawn gets excited about Excel spreadsheets and pivot tables while I get excited about video shoots and regency balls. Dawn comes from a rough home life, and I come from a very sheltered one. Dawn’s fifty-eight . . . and I’m twenty-eight.
Multiple times throughout a week, I’ll peek around the wall to ask her to help me edit a blog post or to get advice about whether I should say yes or no to an opportunity (I have an awful time saying no!). We’ve spent time together outside of work, too—exploring beaches, trying new restaurants, and having meaningful conversations and prayer times. Next weekend, she’s going to help me with my budget (and of all things, she’s excited about it!).
I wish I’d known earlier that God blesses us with friends of all ages! When I graduated college seven years ago, I floundered for a while. No one had warned me that I wouldn’t always have a group of friends just like me. I was unprepared for that change as my friends started marrying and my pool of single friends dwindled.
I can’t tell you exactly when I finally understood that friends could be any age, but today, I have an incredibly diverse friend group: single, married, widowed, divorced; senior citizens to high-schoolers . . . and younger.
How about you? Is this a lonely time for you? Have you embraced the fact that your friends can be completely different from you, or are you still looking for them to fit your mold? Could it be that you’re overlooking God’s provision of a friendship during this season because it doesn’t look like you would expect?
Hopefully you have one or more “Dawns” in your life. If not, I encourage you to ask God to help you recognize the possibilities of friendships all around you!
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