My Friends are Like Good Gumbo

In honor of National Best Friends Day I did the Diddy on this post (remixed it) and am telling the world about my super best friend!

The path to joy and happiness is made so much richer by the hands and hearts that help you get there. The only problem is, sometimes it’s hard to put yourself in position to receive the right people to walk that path with you, even if their strut is different from yours. Being a friend can be hard. You have to be open, honest, transparent, willing to listen, and available to build/maintain relationships. That can be challenging even for the friendliest people. It can be even harder to trust friends to walk all the way with you without letting thoughts of cynicism and fear creep in. Especially as women, we sometimes buy into the myth that women can’t be friends. That’s not so, I tell you. It’s simply not so.

I’ve been blessed with many amazing friends in my life. In hindsight, I’ve come to appreciate that most of them are not like me on the surface, but are exactly who they are to help me become who I’m supposed to be. We’re all similarly different in our own right and that’s not a bad thing. I like to think of us like a pot of gumbo made with a lot of different ingredients that often don’t taste as good alone, but are scrumptious together. Our personalities, pasts, careers, social statuses, history together and the likes, are a hodge-podge of different types. But when you mix us all together we’re all that God desires us to be for each other and that makes us as good as gumbo!

My best friend since Kindergarten, Edith A. Arms, is a staple in my gumbo. If I were to categorize her in my mix of “good gumbo” friends, she’d be the spicy, Andouille sausage that’s a must in any real, true gumbo. Some people can’t handle true, authentic Andouille and that’s simply because they’re not supposed to:) Since 1977 she’s paved the way for my perception on what a real “tried and true, through the good and bad, keep my secrets, ‘nobody better talk about her to me or me to her’, tell me the truth whether I like it or not, don’t talk everyday because we don’t have to, going in different directions and always end up besties” friend should be. For that, I’m grateful!

(I saved the best picture for last. Oh to be a teenager with big, beach hair on a church-sponsored vacation in a too small, inappropriate swimsuit again. Those were the days…LOL!)