Is Best Better Than the Rest?

When I was in elementary school I had three best friends, and we did everything together. It was a bit difficult, because it wasn’t an easy number, but it worked out. We jumped rope together, went to each other’s houses and made songs to sing in front of the school assembly. I was overjoyed. I had always been a traveler, moving from friend group to friend group, so finding my place with them meant as much to me as it could, as a ten year old girl. We crushed on boys, and met each other between classes. I thought we would be inseparable.

I remember at one point, when the dynamics started to get weird, and suddenly I was the odd man out for a little while. I went home to my mom, trying to make sense of it and she gave me a beautiful metaphor to bring to them about how friendship is a bank and you can’t withdraw more than you deposit. I was ecstatic to share what I learned with them.

The next day at lunch when I was the brunt of the isolation once again, I did my best to recite my mom’s words to them. To my dismay, they erupted in laughter, and I, overcome by pain and rejection, began bawling. That continued until a teacher came over and escorted me to a more private place.

My best friends found enjoyment in my pain, and that never made sense to me.

Throughout elementary and middle school I became very close with my neighbor, Kylie. She was my ride or die, my best friend. We began going through big life events at the same time, and always found a way to connect back together to make our worlds make sense. Slowly though, she started dating guys, and I was left in the dust. I hadn’t yet entered that world and I felt myself being left out of a puzzle, my piece no longer fitting.

Once again, a friendship that I had looked at as a piece of me was breaking off, and unknowingly I began to put up walls. 

Today I realized that I have only called one person my best friend since middle school. Whether or not these events are the reason behind my withholding, I couldn’t tell you, but I think they have shaped my relationship to this role that is “best friend.”

Best is a very extreme word if you think about it. It means first place, greatest, and foremost. A role that, to me, seems like a big job. To say someone is the leading place in that category of your life is rather vulnerable. To say that someone is the closest to you in at least some context also leaves lack for the other just “friends” in your life. Does their closeness mean less? Are they just an extra in the movie of your life? I’ve found, in the last many years, that different people get different pieces of me. So how could I assign one as best?

For years I didn’t. I held that word like poker cards to my chest. I’d get close to people, but not close enough that I could see myself growing long term with them. I let people get pieces of Sora, but nobody got the full picture. Sure, others assigned the word to me due to closeness and comfortability, but even then I was reserved. I didn’t take that word lightly.

But then I found a friend that had, over time, seen every piece of me, and I got to see every piece of her, or at least I thought that. We shared the same faith, which was pivotal for me, and maybe part of the reason that my heart had once again opened up to the term. A vulnerability had come back. Me and this friend had many years of history, and cautiously but happily I lent out the term that was almost lost from my dictionary. It had been years since I had felt safe enough to use such a big and significant title, but I meant it when I said it. She knew me, and I knew her. I could see us being friends forever. She became my best friend.

And then life happened, as it does, and I went through many hard things. She was there for me as best as she could be during that time, though she was going through stuff as well. We were each other’s mutual aid, living outside of the church’s “best” for us, but still getting God’s best for each other in that circumstance. Our friendship felt sovereign, and I relaxed into that.

When I got married, facing one of my biggest fears, life went haywire for a while. I thought I was losing myself, and hit the lowest lows I had faced up to that point. Unknowingly, I looked to her to fix me. I put a pressure on her that wasn’t hers to carry, and she stepped away.

There is a verse in the Bible that says, “A man with many friends comes to ruin, but there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.” (Proverbs 18:24) For months, I went through the hardest season of my life, and my friend was nowhere to be found. My heart wilted with the pain, each arrow that hit me not only hit my life and experiences, but also hit on that verse, and I felt the intensity once again of being left without someone that had promised to be there for me. That’s what best friends are, afterall, right? 

I have a friend now that calls me her best friend, but I haven’t said it back. Words carry weight, and the weight that that agreement would mean is one I’m not ready to carry. We have different backgrounds, afterall, and so there are ways that our lives can’t align enough for me to dole out this momentous word. And the word has stung me a few too many times for me to be able to wield its powerful meaning.

But this I know to be true. That through the seasons, through the highs and lows, the Holy Spirit has always been the best friend to me that anyone could. In my season of growth that lasted for three years in White Hall, the Holy Spirit was my best friend, leading me through valleys, and into rivers that I learned to bask in. When life became hell and my very lively hood and breath was hanging in the balance, the Holy Spirit was there, through different people at different times, fighting for me as a best friend would. In the season I now am in, where I’m learning again the feeling of goodness, the Holy Spirit is there, inviting me into more and out of the slavery that I had been held captive to.

The Holy Spirit is a safe best friend. He never leaves or forsakes us. He’s a comforter, a teacher and a helper. He is everything I’ve ever needed, and perhaps the reason I didn’t use that word for so many years was because no one but him could live up to my expectation of a best friend. Nobody could keep their promises the way he can, nobody could be ever present the way he can. Nobody could see to the core of me and still love me, the way he can.

But now, as I look at my life, delivered, healed and whole, I can say with ease that I could use the word again, and it wouldn’t carry the same weight that it used to. God uses many people at many times to expand and safeguard our world. I could easily see myself calling someone a best friend now, and the expectation that that would carry would now be a lot less. I don’t need someone to fill a place in me that God now fills. He, afterall, has made me complete in Him. “For you have been brought to completion in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.” Colossians 2:10