Let us lay hold of friendship.
In the eternal life shall we not have friends forevermore? I used to think that friendship meant happiness. I have learned that it means discipline. 
No matter how hard we look, we shall never find a friend without faults, imperfections, traits, and ways that vex, grieve, annoy us. Hard as we try, we, ourselves, can never fully fulfill the ideal of us that is in our friend’s mind. We inevitably come short of it. But don’t give up friendship, though we have found this true.
To have a friend is to have one of the sweetest gifts that life can bring. To be a friend is to have a solemn and tender education of soul from day to day. A friend gives us confidence for life. A friend makes us outdo ourselves. A friend remembers us when we have forgotten ourselves, or neglected ourselves. She takes loving heed of our health, our work, our aims, our plans. A friend may praise us, and we are not embarrassed. She may rebuke us, and we are not angered. If she is silent, we understand. It takes a great soul to be a true friend— a large, steadfast, and loving spirit.
One must forgive much, forget much, and bear much. It costs to be a friend, or to have a friend. There is nothing else in life, except motherhood, that costs so much. It costs not only time, but affection, strength, patience, love. Sometimes we may even lay down our life for our friends. There is no true friendship without self-abnegation, self-sacrifice.
Be slow to make friends, but, having once made them, pray that neither life, death, misunderstanding, distance, nor doubt, will ever come between the relationship. Be patient, let us be kindly, and let us be self-possessed in friendship. Be true to our friends, and then believe that they are and ever will be true to us. True love never nags. It trusts.
One of the dearest thoughts to me is this: that a real friend will never get away from me, or try to, or want to. Love does not have to be tethered, either in time or eternity.
It is a great and solemn thing to say to another human soul: Your joys shall be my joys. Your sorrows shall be my sorrows. In absence you shall yet be near. You shall never be so far from me but that I can hear your voice in the twilight and in the night. Though land and sea divide us, you shall yet walk by my side, still I shall feel the touch of your hand, and rejoice in your sympathy. Your letters shall make me strong and glad. I am not afraid of you. With you I don’t need to be too greatly reserved. To you, I may speak the deep thoughts of my heart. With you alone, I laugh. With you, I shed tears and am not ashamed. To you only can I say, “Behold, here am I, an undisguised human soul. All others know me in some one mood,—you know me in all moods.”
In the eternal life we may make new friends. But can those radiant, perfect, and glorified ones ever be quite as near and dear to us as those more human souls that we have known when they, like ourselves, were but struggling, aspiring, and suffering mortals. Those who have shared joy and pain with us, who have watched us wistfully over mountain, wilderness, and sea, who have quarrelled with us and kissed us again, who have loved us with tenderness, and who have been faithful to us, even unto death? Comings and goings, hugs and farewells, loving nearness and grieving tears: these are experiences of friendship on earth. But in eternity there shall be neither weeping nor any sound of sighing, and there shall be no parting there.
Tags: life lessons, worthwhile
