Friendship

I’ll admit it, I watch Sex and the City. I didn’t when it was a new show. I tried one time and the minute it got to a steamy part, here came our youth minister to the back door. I quickly turned it off so he would not see what I had been watching. The reason I ever even tried to watch it was because one of my friends told me she watched it every week WITH HER DAD! My thought process was that if she could watch with her dad it couldn’t be as wild as I had been led to believe. Now, I am not a prude, or so I thought. But I didn’t want to have to explain myself to Jon or Tim, who are also not prudes, but they seem to think they are my moral caretakers!

I have matured and even though they still make comments when they catch me, I watch repeats of Sex and the City. I think I have seen all of the episodes, but if I come across one on LIfetime or whatever station they are on, I will watch. The other day they were showing the movie and I watched part of it and realized I really could not remember what happened, even though I had gone to see that in the movie theatre. ( I love to see movies alone!) The main reason I thought I enjoyed the show was because I am obsessed with fashion and because I love to see people out and about in New York City. I have really missed not getting to go to NYC as often because of school and not going at all this summer has been tough!

Today I realized why I really enjoy the show. I had lunch with 3 of my girlfriends. We were in a circle together years ago at church and we have sons who are the same age and very close friends. They all have multiple kids so we have been through all sorts of situations together. We have watched our kids be children, go on youth trips together, go off to college, grad school, get married, take jobs, make mistakes and be triumphant. We have worried together, bragged to each other and kept each other in our prayers and hearts, even as we have gone back to work or school and made our actual time together very scarce. These are the women who showed up at my door with food when I had a difficult hysterectomy. They are the people who brought food for us when we got back from choir tour with 80 youth and were there with food when I got back from the hospital with Tim after he nearly died from morphine poisoning in the hospital. (Lots of food involved I know!)

Today we met for lunch and immediately picked up where we left off the last time we were together! The three of them see each other often, they are in the same Sunday school class and belong to a supper club together. I am sort of the odd man out, especially when I went back to school. (Kind of like when Samantha went to LA to live, well maybe not.) However,  I am the one who is always busy and gone it seems. Weeks ago we made this plan to meet for lunch and today we actually had no emergencies and met at Zoe’s. We were only together for an hour but in that hour we laughed and got caught up on the new house renovations, what our kids are doing and what we thought about different issues in the news. We were all open and loving, even if we have somewhat differing views on things at times. We got tickled more than once and had to get it under control since we were in a public place. It was so fun and refreshing to see these woman and it made me realize why I really watch Sex and the City. It is because those women are there for each other. They can go without seeing each other for awhile and jump right back into each others’ lives with no hard feelings or feelings of awkwardness. They are just friends and no matter what has happened during their separation, they go right back into their comfortable friendship.  And that is what we all crave. Human contact and unconditional love. People we can relax around, who will accept us where we are, who really care about each other and who can see the humor in pretty much any situation.

And so we might not look like the women in Sex and the City and we certainly don’t act much like them (we are all married in LONG time marriages) but I did feel that joy they exude when they finally get to the restaurant to share whatever is happening in their lives. And I am grateful for my friends even if we are in Homewood, AL and not NYC, eating chicken salad instead of having cosmopolitans. Because what it all boils down to anyway is true friendship.