“If we would always recollect that we live among men who are imperfect, we should not be in such a fever when we find out our friend’s failings; what’s rotten will rend, and cracked pots will leak.”

“Friendship is one of the sweetest joys of life. Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of their trial had they not found a friend.”

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I’ve always said that I will marry my best friend. This is not a retrospective declaration, but a forward-looking, predictive statement: by the time I drop to a knee, let alone by the time the pastor begins, “Dearly beloved,” I will have been with my best friend—someone I can count on to be able to do life with together, and she on me. I’ll not marry because everyone else is doing it or because it “seemed like the thing to do,” as I’ve heard so many disillusioned married couples state as their reasons for wedding.

You can kindle the fires of romance with anyone with social grace and intuition enough to know how to say what, when. But it takes two people submitting to Christ and really getting down into the trenches and sweating a bit to find a true friend.

“If we would always recollect that we live among men who are imperfect, we should not be in such a fever when we find out our friend’s failings; what’s rotten will rend, and cracked pots will leak.”

“Friendship is one of the sweetest joys of life. Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of their trial had they not found a friend.”

---

I’ve always said that I will marry my best friend. This is not a retrospective declaration, but a forward-looking, predictive statement: by the time I drop to a knee, let alone by the time the pastor begins, “Dearly beloved,” I will have been with my best friend—someone I can count on to be able to do life with together, and she on me. I’ll not marry because everyone else is doing it or because it “seemed like the thing to do,” as I’ve heard so many disillusioned married couples state as their reasons for wedding.

You can kindle the fires of romance with anyone with social grace and intuition enough to know how to say what, when. But it takes two people submitting to Christ and really getting down into the trenches and sweating a bit to find a true friend.