The Gift of Midlife Friendship

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Years ago, I attended my ten-year high school reunion. I was talking with a mother of a classmate who had just attended her thirtieth. “At your ten year,” she said, “you’re still trying to impress each other. By thirty, you’re just be happy to be together.”

In my limited, 28-year-old wisdom, I had a hard time imagining that kind of freedom. But I am starting to understand the happiness of just being together. Of the growing acceptance of how things are, good or bad, and the value of looking at a face that knew you then and still loves you in spite of it all.

What Time and Grace Teach Us

Friendship as a young mom is often difficult. At least it was for me. Don’t get me wrong, I had wonderful women who I still count as my closest friends. But there are so many choices we make for our young families. Even in a grace-filled church setting, we are often pricked by the sharp edges of others’ parenting choices.

Homeschool, private school, or public school? How much screen time? Are PG movies okay? And which ones? The list is endless. And I wasn’t on social media until my oldest was twelve, so I didn’t have an app that allowed me to scroll through a cacophony of others’ opinions on a daily (or hourly) basis.

One of the joys of middle age is that we are settled in our choices, for good or for ill. We are no longer preoccupied with doing it all right, because we know we did things wrong.

Some of us look back at clear forks in the road and wish the other option had won the day. Others of us see patterns that are only visible in hindsight. Things that were inscrutable when we were living it.

So what is it that makes midlife friendship so much more special?

We Truly Let the Secondary Be Secondary

As Paul outlines in Romans 14, Christians have different convictions about certain issues. And while I realized that in my younger years, it was hard not to feel the weight of other people’s choices as an indictment of my own. If someone was making a different choice, did that mean I was doing it wrong? The truth is, sometimes I was doing it wrong. But I was raising my children, with their own unique personalities and needs. I wish I would have rested in that more, rather than feeling like everyone needed to see everything the way I saw it.

We Forgive Ourselves and Each Other

As I noted above, I have a few things I wish I could take back. And I have a few things that felt like mistakes that God has fully redeemed. God truly works all things for our good and his glory, even the painful things. That is something I can only see with the long view.

We all had our own road to walk. And we all were doing the best we knew how. Life is too long to hold on to the hurts. And it’s too important to not be honest with our friends about our regrets and our hopes.

We Pray for Each Other, and Pray Boldly

I probably should have been better about this in my younger years, but I tended to view any problem as something I needed to fix. The older I get, the more I realize how little is really in my hands. I have seen God answer my boldest prayers and do things I didn’t think he could possibly do.

I am still working out my salvation (Philippians 2:12). I still am not perfect, but I am more consistent with my spiritual disciplines—mostly because I now have the time. But I am so much better at asking God to do the things that only he can do. Which is most everything, including changing me.

A couple of my friends from when I was a young mom are no longer living. Some have moved far away. But the ones who remain in my life are such a comfort to me. We are older now, and the years show. We are too tired to try to impress anyone. But we cling to each other, and to our God. Because those are the only things worth holding on to.

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