The Virtuous Daughter Magazine Fall 2017 edition Cherish | Page 14

To the Moon and Back
Cherishing Long Distance Friendships
No distance of place or lapse of time
can lessen the friendship of those who
are thoroughly persuaded of each oth-
er’s worth. -Robert Southey
You meet her on a short-term mission trip, at Bible
School, or while visiting another community. You
connect quickly and easily, talking for hours, saying,
“What? Me too!” over and over, while laughing at the
same jokes. You stay up late in order to spend more
time together. Suddenly, it’s time to leave. You hug
goodbye and promise to keep up, warm from feeling
understood and finding a kindred spirit. “Now what?”
you wonder. Your friendship was formed over just a
few hours or days of shared memories. Does it count
as a real friendship? What happens in five months or
six years? How do you continue the friendship? Is it
worth the time investing in it?
Long distance friendships are hard. They are difficult
to maintain and awkward to define. Often they are
slightly lopsided, with one friend needing and main-
taining the friendship more because of their dis-
tance from a larger church community or not having
friends their age in the local area.
WORDS BY ESTA DOUTRICH // ILLUSTRATION BY SUSANNA SHOWALTER
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I know the challenges of long distance friendship per-
sonally. I was raised by missionary parents and spent
my childhood living hundreds of miles from people
of my parent’s culture. I had many friends within my
second culture, but all my Anabaptist or Mennonite
friends were and remain, for the most part, long dis-
tance. I don’t remember a time when loneliness was
not lurking in the corners, many times sabotaging my
mind and consuming my thoughts. I am forever in-
debted to my friends who reached out over the dis-
tance to make me feel less alone and invisible.
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