Foot Prints

​I was talking with my youngest daughter last week. We were talking about friendships. But not just that. It started with a conversation about friendships and moved into a reflection on the impact that is left by all the people in our lives. Whether an instant/just this moment/a one off, or a lifetime of friendship and deep connection, it is those markings—my daughter calls them footprints—that stay imprinted on our souls.
 
Picture a beach. And as you walk along your foot, it prints itself into the sand. Sometimes the beach is soft and easily impressioned and deep indentations sink below the surface. Other times, barely a mark is made, despite the weight against the ground. 
 
And then the sea. It washes these barely left marks away in just one rhythm of its tide, while those other, deep imprints last over numerous ebbs and flows of waves.
 
This is us. This is us in relationship with others. 
 
And it’s not merely length of time that we play along the shore. Oh no, it’s not just that. Sometimes maybe, but that is not the only requisite. How deep the imprint goes until it finds our soul is also of other calculations. 
 
Sometimes we walk the miles of beach with this one other being, and not one dent is made in the grains beneath us.
 
And other times, it is an instant, a one step, that forces such a deep groove into a soft sand. And stays with us, maybe for a lifetime. Maybe more.
 
And then, oh then, there are those that visit many beaches with us. Soft sand, and hard, lay beneath us as we walk. The water’s edge may wash away some moments that we leave those tracks that track our path. But these footprints, they linger longer, and we can see them, many steps behind. And we can feel them forever.  
 
These are those soul friends. They make deep, deep hollows that, while softened by the salty sea, never quite balance back to the level of the surrounding sand. 
 
The beach has been transformed. We have been transformed.