I’ve just been to visit a long time friend. It is such a rewarding experience to meet up with people who’ve known me through a lot of my life.
So, for mothers, old friendships are important to keep…. and it’s valuable for our children to keep old friendships as well.
Old friends
People we’ve known a long time help us in several ways.
Old friends make us accountable to our past. People who’ve known us a long time remind us — whether literally by saying something, or else simply by our getting together with them — they remind us of where we’ve come from: our roots, our history, our mistakes, our accomplishments, our triumphs. They help us to put into perspective, our growth — or lack of. Through this, we can be encouraged or humbled, both of which are great benefits to us.
Old friends make us grateful: whether we’ve come out of hard times, best remembered with old friends, or whether we’ve grown from hard times (which can give us an uplift from our past) we can be grateful for who we are now.
Old friends make us feel loved. Loyalty, mutual respect, sweet memories and more — give us the sense that someone who “really knows us” accepts and loves us, simply because we’ve stayed connected to each other.
The benefits of old friends can’t be understated. So we can be of great help to our children when we encourage, enable, foster their relationships with friends through the changing seasons of their lives.
Every blessing,
Sarah