The Importance of Friends

I had a text conversation with two of my best friends over lunch today.  And yesterday.  And possibly the day before.  Today, we were talking about a book we are all reading.  I was laughing and smiling each time my text music played.  Sometimes, I am surprised by the texts; other times, I am giggling that we know each other so well.  

There are so many cliches about friendship, and I think they are there to prove a point:

We need friends in our lives.  (And sometimes we have a hard time expressing what they mean to us without invoking the emotions of that old Folgers commercial where Peter comes home for Christmas and surprises his mom by making her coffee.)

This same group of gals that I was texting and I have a bible study that meets weekly at Starbucks.  We started meeting regularly over 6 years ago...But it wasn't automatic...and it wasn't easy.

It was necessary.  I had just moved back to Nebraska after living in Minnesota for 6 years.  I adored (and still do!) my friends there, and many were in the same situations as I was in, but I felt God calling me home.  I really didn't have any close friends in Nebraska anymore, and I was not looking forward to being lonely.  So I started looking for people who I wanted to be like and who I thought would make me a better person.  Then, I awkwardly asked them if they wanted to be in a bible study with me.  We started to meet, and I know those first few months were not smooth, but they happened.  Over the next few months, we developed a pattern.  Even more importantly, however, we built trust and friendship.  We found out who the others were and looked to support each other in tangible ways.  

As time has passed, we have each commented on how much we needed this in our lives.  Each of us had been praying for a group of friends, and God figured out a way to bring us together.  We thank God regularly for answering those prayers.

I was originally going to write about how we need to be good friends to ourselves - and we do! - but often that is not enough.  We need to have people around us who make us better...who challenge us...who hold us accountable...who hold us when we can't find strength...who we can be around with no expectations.  We need that group of friends who knows us and loves us anyways.  

I have been blessed with fabulous friends.  And I look forward to the next round of texts and lattes and whatever else comes our way!

Dead Fish in a Messy Room

I gave a speech in 7th grade detailing the true story from my past.  (The speech required the use of a sign/prop, and I created my own using cotton balls.  I got teased about that even through high school...)  Ordinarily, cleaning a messy room would not result in speech class inspiration, but this was no ordinary chore...

I was in third grade, and my mom and dad gave me a fish tank for Easter.  (See - it's already a great story!)  My brother - big spender that he was - gave me 8 fish for my tank.  By the end of that month, or maybe the next, I was done being a pet owner.  I did not like the fish or having to clean the tank.  At this point, I must admit that I wanted the fish to die...not my proudest moment.  Luckily, the fish did not feel unwanted, for they seemed to live forever.  A few months later, after several fish had died, I noticed one of the fish was missing.  I came up with all sorts of scenarios for how the fish disappeared: The fish had died, and my parents removed it without my knowing; one of the remaining fish had eaten the missing fish; or perhaps the fish had been sucked into the filter.  Whatever the cause, it remained a mystery to me.  

Flash forward:  A couple weeks later, I was cleaning my room...Now, it's important to note here that I had a very wonderful system for cleaning my room:  I would push the debris into equal-sized, evenly-spaced piles on the floor of my room, and I would sit down and go through the piles, creating more sub-piles to put away.  (Apparently, I had a very messy room!)  So, after the pile-making, I sat down to go through one when I noticed that I had sat on something.  I stood up and brushed off my behind, sending something fuzzy across the room.  I went over to see what it was, and I ran out of my room shouting.  In case you haven't figured it out, I had sat on my dead, moldy/fuzzy fish.  Remember that it had been a couple of weeks since the fish disappeared.  (Now you see where the cotton in my speech came from:  I drew a fish and glued the cotton over the body, so only the head and tail were visible.)  I'm still not sure if the fish jumped out of the tank or what, but this story has stuck with me for a long time...

Over the past couple weeks, I have been remembering this story quite often.  There are times when I am cleaning my home that feel like I am just making a bigger mess.  It could be my method (see above), but I often feel like things get messier before they can be clean.  

This is how I feel mentally and emotionally right now.  I know I am not at my best in any aspect of my life, but I feel like I am going through a spring cleaning - emotionally, mentally, and physically, perhaps even spiritually.  I have every hope and confidence that I will end up on the brighter side of life, with my heart, body and soul more in tact and healthy than before.  To get to that point, however, I feel like my heart and soul are in piles across the floor.  

At times, I have not wanted to approach these piles.  Wouldn't it just be easier to leave things messy than to put them in their proper place?  But I have done enough "surface cleaning" in my life...If I truly want to get rid of the mess, I have to get dirty and go through the piles.

I just have to be on the lookout for the hidden fish on the floor...

I Killed Spiders in My Dream

I am not a person who dreams at night.  I rarely wake up feeling like I have been dreaming.  I could propose several different theories, but none of them make sense to me - especially given my overactive daytime brain activities!  So it was a huge surprise to me last night when I woke up at least 5 different times with vivid dreams.  Each dream was different, but there was a common theme:  overcoming an obstacle.  

For those of you who know me well, the fact that at least 2 dreams spotlighted on spiders will not shock you.  What shocked me about these dreams was that I purposefully went to the spiders (and these were not small, easy to kill spiders, by the way) and bravely, if not confidently, killed them.  Oh the lessons I could learn from my dreams...

As I have been preparing for 2013, I have been preparing myself for the mental and emotional challenges that have prevented me from finishing goals in my past.  The fact that I was brave and confident about achieving a goal is not lost on me, as that has not been my style.  I tend to be bold at the beginning and fade at the end, but I am working on changing that.  I very rarely face my fears without hesitation and with enthusiasm.  (I even more rarely kill spiders without trying to get someone else to do it for me!)

So often, when I talk about dreams, I am thinking about the future and what that might hold for me, if I were to focus my attention on achieving them.  My dreams tend to be theoretical and full of possibilities, but there is always an undercurrent of impossibility flowing in my dreams.  There is always a sense of fantasy surrounding even my most realistic dreams, and I think, when I dream, I subconsciously accept that the majority of these dreams will never come to pass.  

I have been processing how I would respond to someone else if they were to dream big and accept mediocrity.  I know I would be there to encourage and support my friends as they pursued a dream...but what would I do if someone with a dream felt they could never achieve it and gave up before they tried?   I'm that pushy friend who will ask a ton of questions in an attempt to discover why the dream "cannot be achieved".  I'm that cheering friend who will find a way to be present and be positive as even the tiniest of steps is taken.  I'm that sensitive friend who will change subjects (momentarily - not permanently) when a setback has come up...but I'm still that same pushy and cheering friend, and I will bring the dream back into focus.

Why is it that I have not done that for myself?  Why would I not be as pushy, as cheerful, and as sensitive to me when I would be that for most people I meet?  I noticed something interesting as I wrote earlier.  When I wrote the phrase "to discover why the dream 'cannot be achieved'", I first wrote "why the dream isn't important enough".  I don't know if I can even fully appreciate the implications of my first phrase!  Have I been placing subconscious judgments on my dreams?  On myself?  

With all these questions flowing in my head, I know one thing.  I want to be the person who confidently, without hesitation, faces my fears and achieves my dreams.  I want to be a fearless dreamer.  (I still, however, don't want those dreams to involve spiders.)