For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. – Ecclesiastes 3:1 NLT
I met my college best friend during the spring semester of our freshman year. We both had the same major and minor (English and Creative Writing), and though she lived on campus and I was a commuter, we were both born and raised in the same small town. We quickly discovered we had a lot of other things in common, too—we liked the same writers and the same books, we both had younger sisters, we both loved school. She was a true confidant and supporter during the major transitionary period that is college.
We stayed close throughout the rest of our time at university, but soon after graduation I moved to a different state. We saw each other a few more times after that, and we still text occasionally, but for all intents and purposes, the depth of friendship we shared in college no longer exists. There was no drama or relationship-ending fight; we just simply drifted apart.
It’s easy to assume that good, healthy friendships should last forever. If there’s no reason for the friendship to end, why should it?
Right Person, Right Time
God knows exactly what—and who—we need, and He brings those things—and people—into our lives at exactly the right moment. Whether it’s a job opportunity that shows up right as you’re facing eviction from your home, or a friend you met (seemingly) by chance who can relate to you on a deeper level than anyone else has ever been able to, God provides for us in miraculous ways.
God’s Mysterious Provision
But God’s provision isn’t always going to come from the same source in perpetuity. He may bring you the perfect job at the perfect moment, and you stay at that job for a couple years, but then an even better opportunity comes along. He may bring you the perfect friend for a certain season, and you stay friends with that person while your lives organically overlap, but then circumstances change enough that you drift apart.
Losing things the Lord gave us can be scary and disorienting. We tend to believe that if God brought us someplace or gave us something, losing it is a sign of failure—on our part or God’s. We either feel incredibly guilty for our own poor stewardship (I should’ve done more/been more grateful/used the gift better), or we blame God for taking away what He had so graciously given (if You gave it to me, it had to be a good thing, so why would You take it from me). Both of these lines of thinking are perfectly understandable, but neither of them is very helpful.
Sometimes we lose people because of a wound they inflicted on us or we inflicted on them, a wound so deep that it could never fully heal.
But sometimes we just lose people. Life stages advance at different rates. We move to opposite ends of the country. Friends grow apart. The girl who was your soul sister in college may not have a significant role to play in your life ten years down the line. The coworker who made every day easier to get through and brought laughter to your darkest days may fade into a distant fond memory after he leaves for another job. Whatever circumstances—whatever job or neighborhood or book club or restaurant or church—brought you and another person together at a particular moment in your histories may be just that: a moment.
Learning to Let Go
As much as we would love to cling, white-knuckled, to all the blessings God has given us, at a certain point we have to accept that some things are just temporary—and that’s okay. Letting go of or losing a friendship doesn’t always mean you did anything wrong. It’s not a failure on your part or your friend’s.
It also doesn’t mean the closeness you shared was all for nothing. Many beautiful things are made more beautiful because they’re temporary. We can appreciate a cool, crisp autumn day because we know what it’s like to live through a blazing hot summer day. We can admire the beauty of a sunset because we know we’ll never see another evening sky exactly like it.
Seasonal friendships work the same way. Reminiscing about a close friend we had in high school can bring back feelings of joy and remind us of all the good memories we shared together—memories that are made all the more precious because they were specific to one moment in time. There’s certainly sadness in remembering, in grieving the loss. But there’s also gratitude that we had someone so wonderful in our world, even for a short time.
One of the most reassuring and comforting parts about living in step with God is being able to trust that every “lost” or “temporary” blessing, including friendships, will be restored and redeemed in better ways than you can even imagine.
