My Best Friend

My best friend knows what it means to love.  Really love, not just feel in love.  See, “love” is an action verb, not an emotion.  It requires sacrifice and genuine commitment, regardless of emotions and circumstances.  It’s a choice, not a feeling.  The word “love” is perhaps the most overused word in our culture and has lost some of its meaning.  Love and lust and anything slightly more than “like” are practically interchangeable in pop vernacular.  

Real love is choosing to give up your career to stay at home and raise your children.  Real love is always making decisions that are in the best interest of your husband and children, rather than yourself.  Real love is taking care of your father-in-law when he has surgery for lung cancer while his son is in Iraq.  Real love is holding up your sick husband in the bathroom while he pees in a jug because he’s too lightheaded to stand on his own since his red blood cells are too low.  And real love is comforting him afterward when he “has a moment” because he doesn’t feel like the man he used to be.  My best friend has a black belt in “Real Love.”

My best friend has stood with me through two deployments to Iraq, during which I was gone for over 22 months total.  She did all she could to support and encourage me while keeping up a house and, during my second tour, raising a child.  We both think that God has used these experiences to prepare us for what we’re going through now and what lies ahead.

My best friend isn’t superwoman, but she’s pretty incredible.  She is doing an excellent job of caring for me in the hospital, taking care of our two girls and home, with some much appreciated help from family and friends, and making sure I get to see my daughters.  She’s torn, as anyone would be, because she wants to be in both places, but of course she can’t.  The thing is, it does me so much good knowing that my daughters are safe and cared for by their wonderful mother.  

Who can find a virtuous and capable wife? She is more precious than rubies. Her husband can trust her, and she will greatly enrich his life. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life. Her children stand and bless her. Her husband praises her: “There are many virtuous and capable women in the world, but you surpass them all!” (Proverbs 31:10-12, 28, 29 NLT)

To say she has enriched my life is an understatement.  To be honest, before I married my best friend I didn’t have much of a life.  She has helped me be more compassionate and loving.  When I am with her, I am the best version of me.   There isn’t a doubt in my mind that God brought us together.  From the blind date when we first met to our latest “date night” in my hospital room, it’s evident that His guiding and loving hand has been on our marriage.