Greetings from Thailand!
And welcome to 2026!
It has been a fast and full year for us, full of joys and challenges. I am fresh returned from a trip to Germany that has overwhelmed me in so many ways. My heart is full and grateful. My body is tired, and a little swollen from too many pastries.
There were two themes which seem to encompass our trip: beauty and friendship.
Beauty, because literally everywhere I turned I was stunned by the astonishing beauty, God-made and man-made---mountains, cathedrals, villages, and Christmas markets.
Friendship because everywhere we visited we stayed with friends who humbled and delighted us by their hospitality, love, and kindness.
Let me step back for a moment, and mention that I have sometimes struggled with friendship as an adult. I am afraid I am often a lousy friend. If it wasn't for the fact that I have been blessed with a number of persistent, low-demand friends in my life, I would probably have few long term friendships.
There are reasons for this I [think] I can recognize.
One is that I am not good at long distance communication. I like to be where I am, so to speak. I don't like talking on the phone. Video chat is better, but still not as good as old fashioned, face to face conversation. It is hard for me to be intentional about scheduling time to call and just talk with people I do not live among.
Secondly, I busy and so are my friends. I have a full time job, two full time kids, a wife who also works full time, part time preaching responsibilities, and way too many hobbies. It is just more difficult to find the time to spend together, which is the soil in which most friendships grows.
Thirdly, I have been burned in some of my adult friendships. Perhaps some of you have been too. It makes me more cautious, and in some ways, more reserved, which makes the growth of friendship more difficult.
Lastly, we are all growing more to a point, moving from a more generic to a specific kind of person. The younger we are, the more generic we tend to be (10 year olds make friends fast because most 10 year olds are very similar). We become more differentiated as we get older because we exercise our agency more and grow more confident in what we like and do not like, regardless of who else shares our preferences or views. We have more specific likes and dislikes, points of view, opinions, politics, religious convictions, etc. So while we may grow more and more close to someone who shares our views and beliefs and preferences, we may also at the same time grow more distant from those who don't.
What this last trip has impressed upon me is that friendship may be simpler than our expectations of it.
I think I came into my adult friendships expecting something very similar to my childhood friendships---the closeness and bond of lots of time together, a particular best friend who I talk to about everything and is my companion in adventures, and someone who seems to need me as I need them.
Maybe the greatest hindrance to my adult friendships, was my childhood expectations of friendship.
For one, there simply isn't the same amount of free time for most of us as adults. With that in mind, it is valuable to keep my old friendships, and perhaps even go back and rekindle some of those relationships because we already have a solid foundation of many hours together.
We reconnected with some college friends in Chiang Mai a few months back, and another in Germany. It felt so easy to step back into our old friendship, and I realized what I had missed out on by not taking time to continue investing in those friendships.
Even an annual Christmas card is a good start.
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As for new friendships, I need to keep my expectations low, or perhaps brief. We won't have as much time to spend together, so enjoy the time we do find, and be gracious with each other in our expectations.
Secondly, as an adult, and someone wiser [I hope] than my younger self; I have real doubts about whether the concept of a "best friend" is a healthy or good one. In school, you may remember the hurt and stress that sometimes came when we wondered if we were someone's "best" friend and the resulting sense of competition. More to my point, as an adult if I am married, my spouse is my best friend. And that is a good thing. I don't mean that there isn't a place for a close intimate friend of the same sex too, but our spouse will naturally fill many of those roles we formerly held with a best friend.
Lastly, healthy friendship is not about need, but mutual enjoyment. For those of us who have the hangup of always wanting to be needed, this is hard. Our best friends won't need us. They ought to be self-reliant. They ought to have other friends. They should be ok without us.
And I need to learn to be ok with that too.
Ok without them, and ok with them not needing me.
We had some incredible times with our friends in Germany.
And they taught me a lot about friendship.
The simple, undemanding, hospitable, mutually enjoyable companionship that can relish several days together, and be fine with several months apart.
I haven't seen some of these friends for almost 20 years. Others for 3 years. Some for 6 months.
But it didn't seem to matter.
The hospitality of welcome, the enjoyment of shared hobbies like hiking and exploring historical sites, eating meals together, and hours of conversation bonded us together.
We aren't best friends perhaps.
We aren't necessary to each other's happiness.
We aren't able to live in the same towns.
We don't all share the same opinions, points of view, or beliefs.
But friendship superseded all these things, and taught me again the delight of mutual companionship and hospitality.
Friendship is one of God's greatest gifts.
How much more joy is there in life when we have companions who welcome us, encourage us, clear space in bedrooms, and cook meals for us along our journey?
Perhaps the greatest friendships are the ones we tend to forget about.
Perhaps the greatest friendships are the ones which demand the least but always keep the doors of their hearts and homes open to us.
With Love and friendship,
Matt, Audrey, Ezra, and Sienna
