Going PlacesSample

When you're in a canoe, the easiest way to travel is downstream with the flow of the current. The water will carry you along and all you really have to do is steer the canoe with your paddle to make sure you don't run into anything.

Sometimes, you need to travel upstream, and it's a lot harder. You have to use your paddle to push against the direction the water is flowing. It's a real workout. In some cases, it's the only way to get where you need to go.

Friendships are mostly like traveling downstream. They should be fun and easy, as long as both of you are steering around the big obstacles. But every now and then, a real friendship may need to travel against the flow. Maybe you need to challenge your friend, or ask them about some unexpected choices they are making.

It takes some real effort to be the kind of friend who asks the hard questions and leans in to listen. By showing that kind of effort, the friendship will end up stronger.

In the book of Proverbs, the writer tells us that friendships might go through some difficult times, but those difficult times end up making those friendships deeper. So while you might be nervous that a hardship will end a friendship, keep paddling upstream. You'll arrive in at a new destination in your friendship that will make you both stronger.