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desperation, not in spite of it, and (2) be built in unexpected ways and with unexpected people.
    More Than Just a Few Good Friends
     
    Why is it that the most frequent question I am asked online is “How do I make friends?” With all the problems we are facing as a society, you might assume that I am exaggerating, but ask my team and they’ll confirm: this is the question.
    It sounds like something first graders would ask, you know? When my kids were that age, they would show up at school and have to make new friends, a skill they obviously didn’t yet have. But no, this is something sixty-year-olds are asking, twenty-five-year-olds are asking, young moms are asking. And I get it, because the art of making and keeping friends was never really spelled out for most of us.
    We learned how to read and write and name the planets, dress ourselves, get a job, and even have sex, but no one ever really sat down and taught us how to make a friend or how to be a friend.
    Is it possible that we (all of us, I mean) are asking the wrong question? Making friends, yes, that’s a concern—as is keeping them. But what if that intimate circle we’re craving is actually found in the wider network of the village that we’ve been missing?
    We wait for those perfect few friends to come along, and then we look for them to play so many roles in our lives. We look to them to be everything to us. What if the power of a little team of friends is that each one brings different things to your life?
    I have fun friends who always make a plan and alwaysmake me laugh. I have wise friends who give me advice and call me out. I have encouraging friends who cheer me on and tell me what I’m doing well. I have challenging friends who disrupt my thinking and push back against assumptions I have made or push me to take greater risks.
    If I expected one or two people to fill all those roles, no one would ever hit the mark. Also true: if I didn’t appreciate the unique roles my friends play in my life, I might be mad that my “challenger” friend doesn’t encourage me more, or my “wise” friend isn’t fun all the time.
    If I start to see that God has put different people in my life to bless me in different ways, then I can both embrace who they are and rest in what I bring to those relationships. These words from C. S. Lewis, written after losing a dear friend he shared with J. R. R. (Ronald) Tolkien, helped me see how my different friends and their unique value in my life are irreplaceable.
In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically [Charles] joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. [1]
    Maybe the question we are really asking behind the question of “How do I make friends?” is this: “How can I belong to an intimate community of people?”
    Needing Each Other Is Not Weakness but Strength
     
    As I sat on my dining room floor in our new home in Dallas, which, as you’ll recall, had no furniture yet, crying in front of my new babysitter, Caroline, while feeling alone and afraid, a clear memory came to mind.
    I pictured myself back in Rwanda, where Zac and I traveled to meet our new son, Cooper. It was late spring 2011, and I was in the passenger seat of a tiny ramshackle van, staring out the window as the driver slowly bumped us along a rutted road. Every few feet, I’d see another mass of women, all different ages walking together, water jugs balanced atop their heads, making their way back to their homes. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but their countenance transcended language. They were talking. Laughing. Filling in blanks for each other. Loving each other well. They were tight. They all were