I don't know exactly where this has come from, but I've been thinking all day about a box of letters that has long been discarded. I'd love to be able to see what my friends from a decade or more ago were telling me.

Alas, in a fit of fidelity the box got tossed years ago. So many of my pen-pals were women (well, girls then) and when I got married it seemed the thing to do. But at what cost? My marriage didn't last and God knows I've ended up with a prototypical man's memory now. I wouldn't mind being reminded that I'm probably exactly the same person now that I was when I was sixteen.

John Eldredge shares a phrase that his friend Brent Curtis coined: multiple intimacy without promiscuity.

I can identify with that. I have friends that I've known my entire life whose lives quickly diverge from mine. And I've had relationships that so quickly dive into the depths of knowing and just as easily are left behind.

I treasure my friends of today. Some I've known a while, some I've only recently met. And continuing the tradition of penpals, I've shared some intimate, ongoing conversations with a few people that I've rarely, if ever, personally seen. I have no idea how life pans out. I'm certainly not where I thought I'd be. But I enjoy how my friends form me and wonder how that looks in the future. Hopefully, when I'm old and wrinkled and cranky(ier), I'll have some circle of friends that can remember with me shared summer nights at camp, or crisp college evenings, or concerts in smoky dive bars.

One bit of truth I seem to be discovering is that I know myself best when I'm most known by others. That intimacy and vulnerability is sure to hurt like hell someday, somehow. But I have a hunch it's worth it in the end.