The Value Of A Good Friend

what's going on i'm tyler your wandering therapist and i'm out here on another beautiful spring morning day after easter and i just wanted to talk with you about a couple of things that have come across my plate the last few days this first one is just the idea of the power of friendship and the blessing of old friends this weekend i had a chance to go visit an old friend that i haven't seen in a couple of years and i took my two youngest daughters with me up to his place in idaho and we spent the weekend together where we just listened to some church conference that we had and we spent some time on the river fishing and then my daughter spent some time with his kids making new friends and spending some time riding four-wheelers in the great outdoors and during that time with my friend i had a great time it reminded me it was this warm rekindling of friendship that i hadn't had and experienced in a couple of years simply because we live in different places and we don't get to see each other much and honestly i'm not one who keeps good contact with friends if they're out of sight out of mind which i could do a lot better at but as i was driving home saturday evening after i'd spent the day with him i was just full of gratitude for the power of having good friends even friends that i haven't had contact with in a while where i can still see them again and instantly be back in that place of fondness and brotherhood and support we were able to talk about some really deep things in our lives that are going on some of the struggles that he's facing and some of the challenges that i'm facing and to feel supported and loved was really powerful and as i was driving home i was reminded of a couple other experiences that have happened in the last couple of weeks where in two separate occasions in the last couple of weeks i've received phone calls from old college roommates of mine and my college roommates are maybe some of my very best friends in the world even though i often don't see them some of my roommates i haven't seen for 15 or 10 years and out of the blue i get two different phone calls from two different brothers of mine we call them the fellas and they happened to call just to check in and see how i was doing and we had a conversation like old friends that carried on for a couple of hours and we talked about the challenges that we're each facing in our lives we talked about the growth of our families and the blessings that we have and the careers we've found ourselves in and we even got into the realm of politics which is always an interesting subject with people um but i i'm so grateful that those friendships have been developed and they're kind of the friendships that you might not see each other for a really long time but when you get back in contact with one another it's as if nothing ever changed and i'm wondering if you have people in your life right now who you haven't seen or talked to in a really long time but who the instant you reach out to them would be more than happy to be in contact with you again to share their love and affinity with you and to have that boost that comes from knowing that you've got good friends there's a song by ben rector called old friends if you haven't listened to it look it up and listen to it it's a great song to get you thinking about your childhood as i was listening to that song after i was thinking about these other experiences i was reminded of my childhood growing up on fillmore street as a little boy and on fillmore street we had this sort of neighborhood where you'd run out the front door after school to go play and we had a church right across the street so there's a parking lot we played roller hockey and football and we did tennis ball against the church building and we had probably another 15 or 20 kids that would just come out to the church every day and we'd run around the neighborhood and sometimes we'd cause trouble but most of the time we just play together and have fun and and i ran into one of my old friends from childhood this was back when i was probably 10 or 12 years old i ran into him a couple of months ago and instantly we were back telling stories about the days on fillmore street and then we caught up about our families and we felt this deep sense of brotherhood again and it's been 20 plus years and so my challenge to you is to think about those other relationships in your life maybe relationships that you've neglected just out of necessity because you've moved on or grown into new places but that might still be there and might still offer you a depth of connection that might be missing in your life if there's somebody that comes to your mind right now i'd challenge you to reach out to them check in on how they're doing let them know you're thinking about them it might feel awkward but i promise you that if you reach out to them they'll be grateful that you reached out have a great day thank you so much for being here with me if you found this to be valuable for you please hit the like and subscribe button if you're facing particular struggles that you need help with or roadblocks that you're running into please submit a question i'd be happy to answer it for you [Music] you