New Kinds of Friends

I feel like the Lord has blessed me so much—beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Throughout my life, God has pushed so many unbelievable people into my bubble; it’s been stretched, shared, emptied, and even popped a couples times. I have traveled to random place, met random people that I could never forget, been in different schools, churches, activities, etc. I’ve had memories that I thought unsurpassable. Times when I laughed so hard I cried and maybe even peed my pants a little. However, one thing has always been consistent in all of my relationships. No matter how great they are, no matter how much fun we have together, how great or deep our conversations have been, they have always ended. And I don’t mean that I’ve had a bazillion “falling outs,” I just mean that they took their natural course of fun, and then for whatever reason, ended. People moved away, interests changed, boyfriends happened, life took a different direction. Whatever it was, all of my past friendships have in some way come to a close.There are always those exceptions though—the people that I don’t keep up with, but whenever we’re in the same city, we make it a point to visit. We're still friends, but after those visits we just go back to our own lives and the occasional facebook stalking of each other, but not much more.

I’ve always been a floater. Each year of my life, I feel like, has been so diverse because I have always had a new group of friends—each group being characteristic of my life stage or interests of the time. The tomboy stage possessed most years of grade school, of course, with the exception of my premature identity crisis when I decided that I was going to be a ballerina…no one ever wants to see that version of The Nutcracker. Middle school was, well just like any one expects middle school to be—horrible, awkward and confusing. I hung out with the insecure girls who didn’t fit in with the popular crowd (but wanted to), weren’t on a sports team, and had braces with left over pieces of lunch and lime green rubber bands stuck throughout them. I hung out with the band kids in high school. We were exclusive too. Band kids only hung out with other band kids. Basically we were like a marching musical cult. College was interesting. Each year brought about new people as well. There were House people, frisbee people, church people, class people, camp people, boys, and then the randoms, of course. These were all great, but they all took the normal course that a friendship would, and then just kind of went in different directions. Sometimes I would really try to not let that happen. I would try really hard for a while, anyways, but they would always just kind of end.

This weekend, though, I had a revelation. God is incredible. Not that I didn’t already know that, but He really showed me another aspect of His incredibleness. He really cares about the little things in our lives. He wants what’s best for us—to see us in fellowship with each other and motivating each other to grow in him. I have definitely seen my share of incredible people, and so many of them have deeply impacted who I am now, but they’ve been influences that have done their job and then moved on. The cool part, the thing that I have been getting at this whole post, is that I think God has given me friends that I think I’ll have for the rest of my life. Now I know we (girls) talked like this when we were in high school—talked about how were going to live on the same street when we grew up, raise our kids together and be friends until we died. At least I did, anyways. But this time, it’s for real.

My friends now are irreplaceable. We are so different, so quirky. We get on each other’s nerves, argue, and talk about everything in the world. We encourage each other, laugh together and cry sometimes too. It’s incredible.

I remember praying all throughout my first senior year that the Lord would give me one really great Christian girl friend. Well, how cool is he? He not only gave me one, He gave me four.

Once again, He amazes me.