Where do you go to buy friends around here?

I am reading The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery to the boys. Today I came across a chapter full of gems about friendship and thought I'd share a few morsels with you.

"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me. . . "

"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince."You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me-like that-in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. (Think about this phrase for a while eh?) But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . . "
I was reminded of football practice - where the moms all sit along the sidelines and bond and I sit alone. After 3 weeks I finally started to feel like a 3rd wheel instead of a heap of garbage along the side of the road. I guess I was finally patient enough and we had all finally looked at each other out of the corner of our eyes - the taming process has finally begun.

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses. "You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first met him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you-the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because....she is my rose."

Ah, the secret of friendship. When we first meet people, they mean nothing to us. We do not see the amazing qualities and potential Heavenly Father sees in all of us. We see nothing. Or we see bad. Among some of my dearest longest friendships are a couple women of whom I first thought "I don't like her". What a snap judgment! To see a rose among other roses and only notice the few broken petals.

But once we invest a little time - once we begin to serve and love and listen to and understand. Those are the seeds of friendship. And once you are tamed, there is no undoing is there? I have a friend with many faults. Of course she has faults - don't we all? She comes across as a little harsh, a little rude. She offends many but not me. Why? Because I know her heart and it is made of gold. Whenever she says something to offend me I remember that she would never ever ever mean to offend me and I search for her true meaning and we go on. She has tamed me and I no longer care about her faults because she is my rose, my friend. What a shame we can't buy more of them at the store.

Thanks for listening and if you haven't read The Little Prince, I highly recommend it.