Recently I was describing to a friend my story of how I went through some seasons of deep loneliness, and I told him that until last year, it had been at least a decade since I’d had a best friend. Surprisingly, he stopped me and asked me what did I mean by best friend?

I started to describe my outdated and immature idea of a best friend, or maybe simply too shallow: someone who makes me laugh more than anyone else, someone I can tell everything to… But I’ve been thinking about what a true friend is for. What really is a best friend?

There are two old dead guys, really famous ones, who make up two thirds of the group we theologians call the Cappadocian Fathers. They were important early theologians, and so both the Eastern and Western Church recognize them and refer to them. Two of them were called Gregory (One of Nyssa, one called Nazanius), and another one called Basil the Great. Gregory of Nyssa and Basil were brothers, but Gregory Nazanius and Basil were each other’s anam cara.

For those of you who may not know any Irish, for the sake of clarity, here I will translate it as “soul friend,” although most often when referred to in English people say “soul mate.” This term actually comes from early Irish Christianity: a soul mate is someone who carves you into the person God made you to be. (See: Proverbs 27:17). Once when I was on a retreat to a Franciscan friary, a friar named Brother Richard explained to us that sometimes you marry your anam cara, and sometimes you don’t. It’s not necessarily tied to the person you will be with.

Gregory Nazanius said of Basil that they were so close, they seemed to be two bodies with a single spirit. What a beautiful thing it is to find such intimacy in friendship. I think in our society, and in church, we put marriage on a pedestal so high that we forget the importance of straight up friendship.

I spent many years living in the middle of nowhere, isolated in many ways. In the process, it deepened me into the theologian I am today. Boredom birthed some beautiful and enduring things in me. I became self-sufficient and independent. But we’re not meant to be independent, are we?

The pain that losing friendships causes is one of the most devastating things in a person’s life. I’ve lost friends so many times either because I moved away or because of other more painful things. This can cause such deep psychological wounds that eventually you realize that you’ve built a wall around your heart, which only reinforces your isolation.

But the opposite, the kind of bond you can have with a friend that’s filled with the agape love of Christ is the most potent force in the world. Oftentimes we acquaint intimacy with sex, but intimacy is not limited to that.

I have one such friend, one who sends me into fits of childish giggles in church. One who sometimes speaks in incomplete sentences because I know what he means without words. One who cleaned up after I got carsick and threw up and felt humiliated, but never once gagged at the smell. One who makes me spitting mad because he’s poking his fingers in old wounds that need to heal.

When you have a friend who loves you and not only wants the best for you, but wants the best for the Kingdom, that person will reshape you. Your anam cara will make you look more and more like you, painfully carving away from you the parts that shouldn’t be there, and lovingly smoothing out and polishing the best parts of you, until you gleam in more and more imitation of Jesus.

This is what a friend is for, and finding friends like this is worth more than gold.