Skip to main content

When opposites attract

This weekend has been one filled with many birthday celebrations--for one, I'm thankful for birthdays because it gives us, at the bare minimum, excuses to get together. More than that though, when I'm writing that card to the birthday gal or guy, it makes me reflect on our relationship and how much it has grown.


Last night as I was writing that note for my roommate Grace, I was just in awe over what I witnessed as a friend over the past year. Grace and I have known each other for 4.5 years, but we never REALLY got to know each other until two summers ago when we served side-by-side during a summer missions project. Our friendship began as we planned cooking lessons for underachieving youth in Detroit, woke up together to trek to morning prayer, and even shared a van ride to Austin and back. The more I interacted with her, the more I realized how different we were--hobbies, upbringing, strengths, favorite colors, you name it--in every way we were opposites. Truly the only commonality we had was our desire to love God more.


Having had nearly no common interests and vastly different schedules, Grace and I never had much time together to build our relationship. But MAN I can't believe I had the privilege of witnessing things in her life over the past year. Seeing her graduate from nursing school, pass her licensing exam, and get hired as a registered nurse have all been a complete GOD THING. Without having known her individual struggles and the things she was going through, I would not have been able to accredit all those things to sure signs of GG. Because even the struggles we went through were so different, often times I didn't even know how to respond or how to pray for her.. But MAN I'm so glad I didn't miss out on witnessing God carry out His promises through every trial that came her way.


Here's to another year of experiencing God's grace through our unexpected friendship!



Photo: The beginnings of our friendship via csmp physical training (on a rainy day hehe)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And just when you least expect it..

Today I went down to the food court with another intern and as I opened my box of sushi, I hesitated. Feeling as if there were too many eyes on me (I only ate with one other person -_-), I questioned whether I should pray before my meal, in fear of social rejection. After I prayed, she asked me if I was a Christian, and I awkwardly responded that I was. Then she said, "Finally! What a relief to know that there are other Christians!" WHAT THE.. I couldn't believe it. Here I was, sitting with a co-worker that I had simply exchanged cordial greetings with, now talking about God haha. Even though I was scared and honestly did NOT want to pray, God used a habitual thing like that to open up opportunities for me to invite her to small group and share my faith. Crazy how He works when you least expect it.
5 comments
Read more

Delirious

delirious (adj): marked by uncontrollable excitement or emotion; ecstatic; filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy (1 peter 1:8); me I don't think I had a personal relationship with God until 2 weeks ago. There have been a lot of formative moments and experiences in the past 6 years of me considering the existence of a higher-being, 3 yrs of being a Christian, 1 year of living by faith, 6 months of serving on church leadership, 1 month of dire circumstances, each of which have been challenged and supported by specific instances in my life.* But it's only been 2 weeks of finding pure joy, satisfaction, and freedom in Christ (alone). Though it's been 6 years since I first stepped into a church building and 3 years since I accepted Christ, I was always afraid to admit that I didn't know what grace, freedom, repentance, or Jesus meant--in terms other than the ones I had heard or read--it was always a theory and never a reality in my own life. After years of doing chur...
5 comments
Read more

Surrendering my career

"Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." The concept of surrendering my career never made much sense to me because I've always known what I wanted to do, and was perfectly en route to achieving it. I thought I was better than everyone else for knowing what I wanted to do. In all frankness, I just thought I was awesome and gave myself credit for every accomplishment in my life. When God directly confronted me last year with how much I had been living for myself, I made all excuses to rationalize and justify myself. Somehow God changed my heart to be willing to let go of my perfect plan and insured that I would never find the type of security and identity that I found through a job title or company reputation. He took me through a whole year of rejections and dejected moments so that I would learn what it means to be satisfied with merely having a relationship with the God of the universe , not just praising Him or want...
2 comments
Read more