Friends

I've been discovering something funny lately: friends rarely seem to happen and mix all together quite the way you thought they would. Sometimes it may feel like you have none, and other times you get so busy with friends that you begin to wonder where the time has gone. I know that time can breed dysfunction, especially without connection and contact, but I'm also discovering that there are instances when time apart is necessary (absence makes the heart grow fonder?). But it's difficult. My high school pastor, Mark, told me that college will be lonely. Which wasn't what I had expected him to say at all. I had thought his words would more resonate with the feelings of fun and adventure and such. But as I've been experiencing it, I'm realizing that he was really right. Sometimes you don't get along with people. Sometimes people rub you the wrong way and sometimes you do the same back to them and they just need some space apart from you.

But then there's this weird thing with expectations on our friends. Expectations are dangerous things. When we try to impose expectations on any situation, much less people we hang out with, we can create disunity because things will never quite go the way we expect them to in our minds. Someone may react differently than we had hoped or sometimes we just don't know what's expected of us by others. But whatever the case, it's important to think about.

Jesus said that there isn't a greater love than this: that one would lay down his life for his friends. This is fascinating to me (as Jesus frequently is) because it makes perfect sense and yet it is nowhere near what we would try to think of as a solution to friend problems. Jesus is showing that to truly love the people we spend most time with, the key element is humility. We have to be humble enough to put away our expectations of them and humble enough to be patient when we don't live up to theirs.

A true friend is not something you find everyday. Though opportunities for friends abound, true friends are something that have to be cultivated and worked on and really can't just be created out of thin air. Time is required, and trust, and, as Jesus says, humility. I love that he understands us so well that he knows this would be the key portion of the issues we would have with friends. I'm thankful every day for the fact that Jesus knows my heart. He knows what I need and what I feel and how to take care of things so that I will be able to live my life in the best possible way with him. I'm thankful for the friends he's given me, old and new. I'm thankful that he loves me enough to take this broken life of mine and put it together in the best possible way.



From left to right: Maddy, Allison, Esther and Julianne, Jessica, Cassidy, Ann Marie, Hannah and Kristin