The Greatest Gift …

These past few weeks have been hard with a capital HA. Yet through them, I have been reminded of the greatest gift any of us can ever receive.

To clarify, I am not talking about stuff with a fancy brand name or an extortionate price tag.

Or even of the outstanding but ever changing beauty of creation.

Whilst I don’t particularly like Autumn or Winter (with Christmas being the exception), I do so love the stunning array of amber tones that we are fleetingly treated to as we transition between the two seasons.

But what I am talking about is the great gift of friendship.

As in real friendship.

Let me explain.

I am referring to those rare and precious individuals with whom we can be exactly who and how we are. The good, the bad and the best not shared in public! The friends with whom censoring is not required, fear of judgment is absent and the knowledge that we are loved is secure.

Within these friendships we can be authentic, real, vulnerable and honest, safe in the knowledge that our baggage, pain and mess will not be treated as a source of gossip but instead respected for the privilege that it is to be shared with another.

This gift is quite simply, worth more than gold.

For these friends offer us mask free time.

They see us.

They get us.

They love us.

They reach us.

Ultimately, they save us from the desolation of being alone.

A priceless gift.

One that no amount of money can ever buy.

In my experience such people are few and far between and it has taken me many years to sift out those who are from those who are not.

In doing so I now feel incredibly privileged to have reached a place where I have several of these very special people in my life.

They have become, quite simply, my family.

Such a precious, precious gift.

The challenge of course, is to find the time and space to actually be with each other. To actually sit in one another’s company to share in and celebrate the victories, to cry and commiserate on the losses and to rant and rage about the injustices.

There is nothing greater than to spend time in the presence of another where both can be seen and valued just as they are. A friendship based on mutuality. One that understands that sometimes I am in a good place and you are not, sometimes you are and I am not, sometimes we both are and sometimes we both are not. Yet always, there is the freedom to be just as we are.

No pretence.

No hiding.

No masks.

Just raw, honest, messy and beautiful, reality.

A reality that is shared.

It is my experience that through these friendships, any kind of pain can be borne.

These friendships are not a given. They don’t just happen. They are something that when found, must be nurtured, protected, invested in and valued.

Nothing can compare.

In our fast paced, achievement and materialism obsessed culture, it is often time for these relationships that suffers. Subsequently, the increased sense of aloneness adversely impacts our individual and collective mental health.

We must learn to recognise that the gift of time spent with those who truly see us and are seen by us, is one of the greatest gifts we can ever give or receive.

It is sacred.

And, I believe, a gift from God Himself.

For, it is true that only God can be God, but it is equally true that we experience Him and His love through the love of our fellow humans.

I was listening to a sermon just last week on what it is to ‘care for one another’. Not superficially. But in the real sense of actually being there for each other not just for the good times but for all times. And a term was introduced which I had not heard before.

It was … ‘co-pain’.

A French word for one who bears our pain with us.

I love that. It’s the greatest gift we can offer another, to be with them in their pain. Not try to fix it, or to take responsibility for it, thus disempowering them, or to speak false platitudes about it, but just to be with them in it. To offer your presence, your attention, your care, your very you-ness.

What a gift.

It is the most important thing we can recognise or invest in to sustain any kind of quality of life. For without an emotional connection to others, something in us dies. We need the spark of the connection to enliven and sustain us, for we live and learn, hurt and heal within relationship.

I was asked recently what it is that humans want most. As an off the cuff reply, I heard myself respond, ‘to be seen, known and loved as we are’.

Isn’t that a universal human longing?

Isn’t it from a place of being loved, that the desire to be all that we can be, flows out from us in to the world around us?

As I look back upon this year, I see that I have continually found myself deep in the wells of grief for the loss of the person who saw me and gave me a mother’s love. At times, it felt like I would never find my way back up or out of the grief.

Yet again and again, these special individuals have met me in that place and helped me to climb back out on the steps of their love.

Wow!

I am immensely grateful for each and every one of them and I make a point of telling them so. I will also endeavour to continue making time and space to be with them.

So, whilst it is true that I have lost the love of a mother this year and that the pain of that continues, it is equally true that I have gained a whole new awareness of the love of those friends who are true sisters.

What richer gift could I realise, receive or give, as we approach Christmas.