Footprints on my heart

I have been thinking a lot about friendship lately: what does it means to be friends? Is there a difference between "friendly" and"nice"? How does a friendship start? When does it end? Now I have decided that, as much as I enjoy analyzing interpersonal dynamics (and I like it a lot), it is time to simply be a friend and enjoy my friends and be thankful for all of the amazing people I have met and who have left their footprints on my heart.
Like my friend Jasmin, for example. Jasmin and I lived on the same floor in our dorm in Munich until last July. In fact, we were next-door neighbors and Jasmin stills calls me her Frau Nachbarin ("neighbor lady") with a huge grin.

When my original Christmas plans went awry and I was faced with the idea of staying here alone for Christmas, she immediately said, Jess, you are always welcome at my house. So I got to spend this past weekend being the sister she never had (even though I come from a relatively small nuclear family--I have only one sister--I can't imagine being an only child). Despite pangs of homesickness (I should really be better at this celebrating-Christmas-in-a-foreign-country stuff; this is my third time around), it was a really fantastic weekend. In my extended family a holiday celebration involves upwards up 40 people of all ages, and one more hardly makes a dent. Visitors are welcomed and merrily absorbed in the tumult. But Jasmin's family is small: Christmas involves her, her parents and three grandparents. Which makes it all the more astonishing to me that they opened their doors and their hearts so wide to let me in to an intimate family Christmas celebration. And these parents and grandparents made me feel wonderfully at home and even brought gifts for me, although some of them had never even met me before. I was overwhelmed.

And Jasmin and I had a marvelous time. We went to church and visited with her family, met up with some of her childhood friends, got our shoes delightfully muddy on a long walk through the fields outside of town, went to a movie on Christmas night, planned a vacation for next fall (hiking in Spain!), and most of all talked, talked, talked. We have one of those wonderful, easy friendships filled with common interests, mutual understanding and lots of laughter (but not at anyone's expense). I am so thankful for her!

So here's to those families and people who have opened up their hearts and homes to a stranger this Christmas, and to all of my friends, and to Christmas and hope and a light that the darkness cannot overcome.