The past few weeks, God has been reminding me of how truly blessed I am, and how He answered a prayer of mine from as far back as high school. All through high school, college, and even our first year of marriage, I had an ongoing prayer request before the Lord. The request might seem silly to most people, but it was a deep felt need in my heart and life. The request was for the Lord to help me find true friends.
I won't get into details, but I had a rough time in high school, partly because of my own insecurities, and partly because of the people I was surrounded by at the time. But either way, I was desperate for friendship, a true friendship, and spent a lot of time feeling very lonely. When I got to college, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people surrounding me, and felt a little lost in the numbers at times. I did begin to forge sweet friendships, and even met my best friend for life, my husband, there. But even then, I was still lacking that connection with other people, where I felt accepted and wanted.
After Tyler and I got married, as much as we loved our time alone together, we began to realize our need for friendship with other couples, if only to help us see that we weren't the only couple in the world who argued over what to watch on television! I began to pray once again that God would help us to find friends, real friends.
Fourteen years after my original prayer for friendship, and six years after praying for God to lead us to Godly couples that we could become friends with, I look at my life, and realize that I would be deeply remiss if I didn't thank the Lord publicly for answering my prayer, abundantly, above, all I could ask or think!
Tyler and I are now surrounded with wonderful friends, more than I can even count! We have friends from church that we share the joys and trials of parenting with, that we share our needs and prayer requests with, and people that we just get to laugh & enjoy life with! It's such a beautiful picture to me, to look around and see how surrounded we are by so many special people who have had impacted our lives in big and small ways! God has been so good to us, and I am so thankful!
Beyond our amazing friends from church, we have also made other friends through our jobs and brought friends with us from our high school and college years that have grown into deeper, more meaningful relationships over th years. I thank the Lord for each and every friend He has given us, and I am overwhelmed by the way God answered that prayer of a lonely teenage girl, who thought she wasn't good enough to be able to make friends. I know that God led me through a time of waiting for friendship, in order for me to draw closer to Him first, and He truly is all that I need, but life here on earth sure is sweeter with friends to do life with too!! :)
Friendship is such a precious thing and such a good gift from my Lord!
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