An Open Letter to my Old Friend

Dear Teman Lama (or old-but-not-in-the-sense-of-age friend),

Do you know what a treasure it is to have known you all these years? Not just to have known you, but to have known you and gotten to watch you struggle and grow and blossom and thrive and learn.

Our friendship isn’t just a photograph, a snapshot of a single moment in time. No, it’s an entire novel worth of touch points: who you were, who I was, who we are now, who we might one day be.

I’m grateful for your friendship because I know how rare it is. I know what it takes to hold onto a friendship over years and distance. It’s not just time and energy. It’s purpose and priorities.

When so much of my life is new (new places, new homes, new communities, new friends), your consistency in my life is unbelievably nourishing. New can be exciting and fun and wonderful in its own way, but old?

Old is a hand holding mine in the darkness. A heart I can trust with my deepest fears and griefs. The memory of laughter wrapping around me as if it were a blanket on a cold night.

You are years of asked and answered prayers.

Do you have any idea how incredible that is?

Yours via text and email and FaceTime and phone call and the occasional long awaited visit,

Marian

PS Also, when you come and visit, I will pause everything to get the most out of our time together. And I won’t even feel guilty about it. msf