True Friendship Magnified

This Friday, I learned a very important lesson Friday night sitting in a cemetery overlooking the expanses of Provo. I learned more about true friendship.

 My close friends know that I like to talk about the meaning of life, as well as make up scenarios in my head and contemplate how I would react to them if they really did happen. One of those situations is the wonder: if I died today, who would care? As I sat overlooking the beautiful city that I have called home for the past 4 years, and asked myself the same question: if one of my friends died, would I care? The answer was, of course I would care! If I found that out, I would drop everything and go do whatever I could to help. But then one of my true friends asked me a similar, but very different and poignant question, if one of my friends asked me to drop everything to help them, listen to them, or just be there for them, would I do that? She helped answer that question for me by repeating a phrase that my mom taught me from a very young age, “People are the most important.” She commented that if people really are the most important, then they should be as important to us in this life as they are after they pass on.

So...my question now is...what are we going to do TODAY to show our friends that we really care? What are we going to do to show that we are a TRUE friend?

Now, in order to be a true friend, one has to know what that means. As I studied friendship this morning for my scripture study, I kept coming back to one definition and one concept of true friendship. The truest friend is our Savior, Jesus Christ.

“Greater love hath no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends”-John 15:13

The Savior loved us so perfectly, and cared for us so perfectly, that He was willing to lay down His own life for our sakes. And while He laid down His life, we know that He still lives.

“He lives to silence all my fears. He lives to wipe away my tears. He lives to calm my troubled heart. He lives all blessings to impart”-LDS Hymn #136, I Know That My Redeemer Lives

That, to me, is what the definition of a true friend should be. Christ is ALWAYS there for us! Yet how many times to do we ignore Him, forget about Him, about Him, put Him on hold, forget to talk to Him, are too tired to talk to Him, or say that we don’t have time for Him? Is this the way that we treat our friends here on earth? I must say, I hope that I can more often be found acting like a Christlike friend and not a Christ-forgetting friend.

Words of Wisdom from Proverbs:

“A friend loveth at all times”-Proverbs 17:17

“A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly; and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother”-Proverbs 18:24

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend”-Proverbs 27:6

I thought this last scripture was particularly interesting. Here, David writes about our friends giving us wounds. Well, think about it this way. A true friend is someone that you feel comfortable being your true self around. They are not someone that you hide things from. You feel comfortable sharing your struggles, your weaknesses, your challenges and difficulties, every party of you. A true friends accepts both those strengths and weaknesses, and still loves you in spite of those. So, a true friend is going to tell it to you like it is. They are going to be honest with you, and help you see how you can improve and help you grow. So, sometimes, true friends are going to wound us. But in the end, they are going to help teach us and they are going to be right there through the entire process.

Some great resources to read more about true friendship:

True Friends Henry B. Eyring