Go around the room - one word from each person. Go around several times.

What my friends means to me, how to be a friend:

• Can be myself without ridicule - visa versa: allows for feedback, trust
• Different levels of friends - number of real friends
• Expect ups and downs, forgiveness - plan to have to forgive
• Best friends - unspoken love.  Friends can laugh at you.  One or two special friends.  As a Christian, not an enemy, the devil.
• There can be distance, it means enduring sometimes
• Sharing, no judging, comfortable, know your thoughts
• Likes you in spite of yourself.  Leaves you alone when it is needed; but doesn't abandon you.  Can tell you the truth with respect.  God puts them in your lives.

More: Friendship is:

• a smiling face when I come to a strange place
• a garden
• a place where I feel comfortable
• a quiet place
• warm bread
• a stage on the way to a loving marriage
• an excuse for a party or celebration
• someone whose shoulder you cry on when your child is dying
• someone there when you are sick and alone
• a pen pal in an exotic place
• someone from far away you have something in common with
• an excuse for a cake
• a step on the way to loving your neighbor
• personal friendships precede nations coming to peace
• quilting together
• laughing together
• helping someone who needs
• family with a stranger
• a pleasure to be with
• a comfort in times of grief
• someone who stops to change your tire in the rain
• a stranger who has suffered much and recognizes your hurt without words

Counts:

• friends (76,275,952)
• friend (58,874,181)
• friendship (8,115,559)
• a friend is (132,539)
• a friend will (18,436)
• a friend can (17,315)
• being a friend (33,619)
• friends of the (2,517,311)
• friends are (1,263,448)
• animal friends (136,993)

Quotations:

• Shakespeare: Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath.
• Abraham Lincoln: "The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend."
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud."
• Proverbs 27:19: "A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like
  is shown by the kind of friends he chooses."
•  Proverbs 17:17: "A friend loveth at all times."

Webster's Unabridged:

• One that seeks the society or welfare of another whom he holds in affection, respect or esteem or whose companionship and personality are pleasurable. -
• A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself. - James Boswell

Webster's New World:

• A person whom one knows well and is fond of; intimate associate; close acquaintance;
• A person on the same side in a struggle

Thesaurus:

• Friend - a person with whom one has a mutual attachment.  Familiar, companion, mate, comrade.  Synonym: supporter, accomplice
• Friendship - state of being friends.  Synonym: association, brotherhood, fellowship
• Friendly - kind, brotherly, benevolent, faithful, steadfast

Copyright 1988-2012  Richard Collins, All Rights Reserved