In your life there is probably someone who makes you smile every time you think about that person. This person doesn’t have to be a significant other, mind you. He or she can be a teacher, a friend, a parent, a relative, or just that one person in class who always has something funny to say.

I think the Lord knew I’d need a lot of these people. Ale, my friend since we were mortal enemies in elementary school, has this outrageously contagious laugh. When I am having a down day, all I have to do is think about his laugh, and I’m smiling, then chuckling, then guffawing out loud while people nearby cast me strange looks. My BFFs, Erika and April, make me smile every time I think about how different they are from me, and how crazy it is that the prepster, the homebody, and the hippie are friends. Add three more to those two and you have my Sisters with a capital “S,” my gang, my family of friends who I would not have survived high school or one half of college without.  I think about my family and all the Sunday afternoons of sitting around the dinner table cracking jokes and eating delicious food.

Sometimes all I can do is sit back and ponder how good God is to let people, wonderful people, into our lives.

What brought this on, you ask?

I had lunch with an old friend today. We hadn’t had a decent conversation since we graduated from High School back home. We’re both very busy people, but we cut out one lunch hour to talk and reconnect over my burrito and his hot dogs. I’m sure all of my readers have experienced a moment where they feel like they’re “picking up where they left off” with an old friend—like all of the sorrows and pleasures and joys and agonies of the last two years never happened, you’re still in high school, laughing about nothing because, well, you’re young and you can.

It’s moments like that, I believe, when I am the most grateful for friends.