Before I tell you this question, I'm going to tell you something even more important.

I'm not sure there's really an answer.

That said, I've been thinking a lot about investing.  How to invest in a way that lasts.  I won't be all coy about it, I'll just come out and say it:  We never know which relationships in our lives will last forever, and which will end tomorrow.  What seems most important today, may end up not tomorrow.  And what seems less important may in fact become a sort of lifeline to us one day. 

We can weigh the past.  We can consider who has stood beside us in previous trials, who has held our hand when we cried.  Who has woken us with coffee and who has fallen asleep to our most honest mumblings.  But ultimately, that is no promise.  And that's not even considering wrongs - just truths.  That some times we are called to be close, and sometimes we are not.  Some friendships are for seasons, and while our heart may ache for them one day we might be called different ways.  That's not to say our hearts won't stay close maybe, or that we wont look forward to a renewed friendship in a different season.  Or maybe we wont. Who knows.

I'm faithful.  I love long, deep, true friendships.  I have many that I've had all my life.  And they've looked different in different seasons.  This isn't out of hurt, distrust, or disappointment that I say it.  It's just the truth that we don't know what tomorrow will look like, or who will be standing beside us.  And therefore, how do we know how to invest?  Who becomes the priorities in our life?

As I said, I don't think there's an answer.  Except that, to some degree, it's not about worrying if they will be there forever.  It's about investing today because you know God placed them in your today.  And that frees you both up to not put weird expectations on one another or act out of fear of losing each other.  Our investments reap broader than in that one direct line held on one side by you and the other by a friend.  We reap in our hearts so much more - so many lessons, so much change.  We learn to love and to forgive. We learn how to be a friend.  We learn how to listen and how to share.  What is our business and what is not.  What is our fight, and what is not.  And our friends learn the same.  We become blessings in each other's lives each day - and if we are lucky, we get that for the rest of our lives with them. 

But we don't know.  So from time to time I think we have to ask, how do I invest in a way that lasts?  And I think we do that by loving them in a way that will leave an investment in their life and in our own, even if we find ourselves in two very different places a year down the road.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I think healthy relationships grow when we focus on the other person and serving them, not so much on the relationship itself.  Because that relationship will change. Guarantee it.  But if your focus is on the other person, loving them, that relationship will almost always remain - and with the freedom to grow and change through the seasons as it must.  It will become a blessing to you both, rather than a rope that strangles you. ;)

I could be wrong - and some of you have relationships that have lasted 20 years longer than any of mine - so I'm more than eager to hear.  How do you invest in a way that lasts, especially through a time as turbulent as the twenties?