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PROBABLY THE FINEST wedding gift my husband, David, and I received was a pair of friends!
Marrying David meant I had to move from Chicago to Oklahoma City, where he was attending graduate school. Just weeks before our wedding, I heard that Mike and Chris Lace—friends of friends, whom we typically saw only at an annual Christmas gathering—were, oddly, also moving to the same area. I got their phone number and called them, promising we'd get together in Oklahoma when we all got there. I didn't know anyone in Oklahoma, so I figured I'd scrounge a friend from wherever I could find one.
Little did I know Mike and Chris were that rare and wonderful blessing—a married couple who fit David and me as though we were meant for each other. Which, of course, we were.
We'd take the ingredients and drive to their house to make pizza. Or they'd come over and play "killer" Uno at our dining room table until after midnight. Chris and I swapped stories of growing up in German-American families or tales of college—where we'd been in the same class at the same school. The guys talked music—David's vocation and Mike's hobby. Chris and I baked dozens of Christmas cookies together. David and Mike shot off fireworks in a parking lot across from our apartment.
Two years later, Mike came to help us load a Ryder truck to move us back to Chicagoland. Chris, exceedingly pregnant, brought lunch. It was a turning point, and we were sad to lose our "immediate vicinity" friendship. But in spite of distance and family activities, we remain loving friends—even if we only do get to see each other once a year now.
HAVING MARRIED FRIENDS who are as close as family is an ideal I hang onto, even in the absence of Chris and Mike. In the years since circumstances separated us from them, David and I have had some long periods when we weren't regularly seeing other couples at all. We didn't even have any close friends in our church! Since both our families live out of state, sometimes we felt pretty lonely. But as I talk to other couples, I find we weren't the only ones who got discouraged in their search for couple friends.
While finding them isn't at all easy, having couple friends can be great for your marriage. As you get close, you'll discover your friends have blind spots and conflicts just as you do. It's an encouragement (or sometimes, a lesson) to watch them work through problems. As they get to know your personalities and your relationship, they're able to offer helpful insights into your marriage. As trust grows between you, you can depend on each other for prayer and support. Best of all, when the weekend looms and your kitchen calendar shows you've got no plans, there's always someone you can call to say, "Wanna come over tonight?" without worrying about cleaning the bathroom or preparing a complicated supper.
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