A wise friend once told me, “Change is the new normal.” Take a moment and consider your friendships. How many friends are in your life now who were with you two years ago? Five years ago? More than 10 years ago? Those years tell us things. About ourselves, our friends, and the winds of change that continue to blow through our lives.

Forever Faithful Friends bless us tremendously. Especially when hard times rise up and friends we pictured being with us during our most joyous moments – budding relationships, a thriving existing relationship, weddings, new babies, celebrating a new business, retirement and more – are no longer in our lives. Hard times come in relationships because we’re human. We hurt and we hurt each other. We misunderstand intentions, disappoint one another, and fall out of friendship in the most unexpected ways.

Breaking up with a close friend can be a devastating experience. How do you grieve the loss of someone you loved like a family member? Someone who didn’t leave your life because of physical death, but left because of relational disconnection, with you? God designed us for relationship. We were made to connect with one another. And it hurts like something fierce when those connections explode, seemingly, beyond repair.

As Remarkable Women, friendships will continue to change and evolve during each decade of your lives. That is what living things do – they grow, thrive, and adjust. Sometimes they grow toward deeper waters. And sometimes they adjust and come to a close, either because one or both friends have grown away from each other or wounding and offense occurs through an argument, preventing reconciliation from happening.

We need Forever Faithful Friends in our corner in those seasons of adjustment and the closing out of friendships that we did not expect. We need people who know us deeply and personally, who we can lean into when friends we love leave our lives. People who will speak truth to us and encourage us when our hearts grow faint and our souls are troubled.

Ruth and Naomi knew this dynamic of friendship transition well. In Ruth 1:1-22, we see real life with these women, from the loss of their husbands and livelihood to  the transition of friendships and the familiar in their worlds.

I do not know what life placed in your lap this year, the losses, transitions, and the disappointments. But I do know that God blessed us with each other, so we do not have to journey alone. We are better together. We gain strength in numbers and we need Forever Faithful Friends with us, those “ride or die chicks” who will be with you until the wheels fall off, and even beyond then!