Today I am Thankful for Facebook

"Every man passes his life in the search after friendship."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

At first glance, Facebook may seem a silly thing to be thankful for. It has many uses, some of which are completely use-less. You can use it to waste time at work, post pictures of your kids, play online games, try to find a mate, network, promote yourself, etc, but in essence it is an online social networking site. A place to connect with people.

I am thankful for Facebook because it has been an invaluable friendship tool for me. It has helped me keep up with my good friends and grow new, precious friendships.

I've heard it said that if you have to keep up with your friends online, you're pathetic, go out and actually see real people. While I understand where these people are coming from, they do not know where I am coming from. My life is extremely busy. I work full time, am trying to get a home based business off the ground, am actively involved in church, and most of all, am a full time wife and mother. I rarely have the time to see my friends in person. Not to mention, I'm a person that abhors talking on the phone. I will avoid it at all costs. That's why my unlimited texting is so important. But Facebook is a place where I can daily connect with those people--friends and family--that are so important to me. I can see pictures of what they're up to, send messages back and forth, and feel a little bit involved in their precious lives that I'm unfortunately too busy to be that involved in.

What I wasn't expecting to happen on Facebook was to make new friends. There are people on my 'friends list' from high school that I barely knew back then, spouses of old friends, and friends from childhood. I added them thinking that it would be fun to see what they were up to and how their lives had changed over the last 10-20 years. And yet, there are a handful of these old friends that have become very special to me on a daily basis. When I am struggling and need support or need someone to be accountable to, they are there. They have reached out to me when people who "know" me and sit right next to me haven't. I have developed very deep friendships with a couple of them. They live in North Texas, so I don't get to actually see them as much as I'd like, but their friendships have become invaluable to me. All of this because of Facebook.

In his book, "Anansi Boys" Neil Gaiman writes:

"It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety."

I think he's on to something there. Facebook is a place to collect and organize our "Cast of 500" as it were. But not only that, it changes things. People from my "cast" that I would maybe only run into 10 years from now at a reunion or at the supermarket, have instead become some of my best friends and closest confidants.

So thank you, God, for Facebook, and the special friendships it has enabled me to create.