I took a break from school during Spring and Summer 2009. With the Fall 2009 semester nearly half over, I wanted to take time to write a new, and hopefully insightful, blog.

I wrote once about how I had newly discovered the social network world of facebook and myspace. My favorite network to use is facebook. I have found many friends through that network, friends that I had always wished I had never lost contact with. Tonight, I am reflecting on friends and how important they are in our lives. There are at least six friends I think everyone should have. It is possible to have more than one of teach type of friend, but everyone should have at least one of the following type of friend:

1. The friend who thinks you are funny, even when you are not or don't mean to be. This type of friend reminds you not to take yourself so seriously all the time.
2. The friend who lets you be yourself. This type of friend puts up with everything about you - good, bad or just plain annoying. (Though if this person is a true friend they will not let your attempts to be yourself endanger your life or that of someone else.)
3. The friend who holds you accountable to living a life worthy of being called a Christian. This type of friend corrects you when you need it, but also realizes that they can only direct you to the truths of God's word; the rest is up to you.
4. The friend who prays for you. This friend will go to God on your behalf on a regular basis, not ceasing until they have seen God's grace manifest in your life.
5. The friend who is like family. This friend will invite you over for family gatherings, will care for your children like an aunt or uncle, and will be a brother or sister (mom/grandma or dad/grandpa) when you need one.
6. The friend who never forgot you. This friend, though time and miles may separate you, will be the one person who never forgets what your friendship once meant to them.

These are the six friends I find most important in my life. I am sure there are some I could think of if I gave myself more time, but I wanted to write about these quickly while I am thinking of them. It is possible, too, that one person could be more than one type of friend. However, I think the reason most people will find at least six totally different people to be the friends described above is that God wants us to have that many relationships. God made man to be communal. He doesn't want us to find all our needs met in one person. If we did find every type of friend we needed in one person a couple of things could result. One, we could "worship" that friend and never really trust God the way we should. Two, we would stop looking for friends, and thus minimize the amount of people we can impact in return by being part of their lives as well.

I do think it is possible that one person could be a different type of friend to different people, too. For instance, to one friend I may be the one who holds them accountable and yet to another friend I may be the only person in the world who finds them funny.

In any case, I hope that everyone who calls me friend sees me as at least one of the six on the list. And, I hope it is the type of friend they need me to be. I would hate to be accountability-holding friend to someone who has enough of that type of friend and who therefore needs me to fulfill a different role for them. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit would reveal to me exactly what type of friend I need to be when.