I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately because of a recent Sunday School lesson on the famous friendship between David and Jonathan in the Old Testament of the Bible. This was in last week’s reading for the Come Follow Christ study guide for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Whenever I start to get too much in my head or depressed, I realize I haven’t been connecting with friends as much as I like. When I connect with my friends, I always come away feeling happier. I’ve been so blessed to have good friends when I was a child and teen. When I became I mom, I met a wonderful group of friends through La Leche League, over 30 years ago. We started having potluck lunches or dinners 3-6 times a year outside of La Leche League meetings. These are my Veggie Gals, and we still get together. Some of us have left the group, and new ones have joined, but the core group of about 6 of us has stayed the same. They provide so much support, laughter, joy and education for me. We pray for each other and cry together. I’m so grateful for them.

I’ve also been blessed to find friends in the homeschooling world, new friends when I moved to Arizona and lived there for 5 years, and then new friends when I moved back to Utah. I have been so blessed by all of them. It’s so comforting to know that I can reach out any time and get help from my friends.

My Sunday School teacher put these questions on the board:

“Who has been a true friend to me?”

“Who needs my friendship?”

“How can I be a better friend?”

All good questions for all of us to ponder and pray about.

She, the teacher, gave six principles of friendship:

1. Trust
2. Closeness
3. Vulnerability
4. Loyalty- the person will stay a friend even if it’s hard
5. Unity
6. She didn’t get to the last point because we ran out of time, but I’m thinking maybe this last principle is “Accountability.” Good friends hold each other accountable to truth. They are not afraid of bringing up truth, in a nice, diplomatic way. Not to hurt us but to help us.

A few people in the class shared stories of finding friends. The teacher and one other member each told a story of desperately wanting a friend, and then within a week, a friend showed up! Then I told my daughter about that and she said a similar thing has happened for her.

God wants us to have friends! Friendship is a principle of living the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you don’t have a close friend, I encourage you to pray and ask God for a friend and He will send one to you. Part of that process might be you following a prompting from the Holy Spirit to reach out to someone, to be the one who initiates the friendship. As my Young Women leader used to say when I was in high school, “To have a friend you must be a friend.”

One of my neighbors is famous in our neighborhood for saying over the pulpit at church “One of the greatest gifts God wants to give to us is each other.” Amen!