Tears like Flowers
When I start to become discouraged, and I get stuck into believing the lie that nothing ever changes in my life, I remember a night under the stars in August, a week or so before my senior year of high school.
Okay, the stars weren't real; they were the glow-in-the-dark kind, stuck on my bedroom ceiling. But under those plastic stars, I was crying. I had had a rather dull summer, socially. My job was fun and my family vacation to Michigan/Ohio was fun but nothing else was fun. I think I had gotten together with a couple of friends on a couple of occassions, but only after I took the initiative to call. No one had called me, had pursued me. And so I was crying that night in August over the fact that I'd gone through so much schooling for so many years and had so very few true friends. I felt like a loser, plain and simple. I felt like no one wanted to be around me. I cried out to God and asked for change, for friendship, and for a senior year better than all the previous years combined.
I don't remember exactly how it all happened, but during my senior year of high school, I became friends with girls I'd known since 6th grade or longer, but had never had relationships with before. It was amazing what God gradually did over the course of that year in response to the summer's prayer. I made friends with Angie and Mandi, girls I'd essentially only spoken to in passing until then. I strengthened friendships with Greta and Hollan, whom I'd known since Preschool and Kindergarten. And I also got to know a girl named Aroea.
High school graduation was far sadder for me than it would've been had I ended high school after my junior year. After all these years I had finally made friends with these great girls and then, just like that, we had to graduate and go our separate ways. I didn't really expect many of these friendships (other than Greta and Hollan, who also lived in Amana) to continue into college. I pretty much thought it was the end.
That fall, I moved up to Cedar Rapids to attend Mount Mercy. I made friends, at least in the nominal sense, fairly quickly, but still felt shy and anxious and didn't quite know if I fit or even if I should stay. When we returned after Christmas break of my freshman year, my friend Natalee told me she was going to transfer. Another friend planned to as well. When Natalee broke the news, I went to my room and cried because I'd already felt so lonely and was sad that one of my closest friends was going to leave. I wondered whether I should do the same. I still hadn't quite found my niche and still wasn't loving life on the Mount.
It was February, and I remember standing in the shower in Regina Hall, crying. I was crying so much that I couldn't tell where the shower water ended and my tears began. I felt lonely and unloved, to tell you the truth. But that next week, everything changed.
Out of the blue, I got an email from Aroea (you know- one of the friendships I didn't expect to last past high school) inviting me to join her and some of her new friends from Kirkwood/church on Friday night. I was delighted at the invitation and went down to Iowa City to see her and meet her friends. That was the first time I met Kevin, her now-husband. We had a fun night, and afterwards I stayed over at her parents' house in Oxford. We stayed up talking until 2:00 in the morning. We talked about the struggles we each had faced in middle school and high school, and it was actually the first time I heard the whole story of how she almost ended it all, and how God had saved her from that doom. Right then and there, as I lay across the room in her sister Rohana's bed, I realized how much darker my life would have been had she been successful and had we never become friends in Mr. Francis' Journalism class senior year. In the dark, I walked across the room and just hugged her. She was surprised at the gesture. We were both crying. We both agree that was the moment when we became real, true, lifelong friends. If you'd have told me even one year before that time that I'd end up in her wedding, or that she'd end up baptizing me someday, I wouldn't have believed it.
During the course of that weekend, I told Aroea about my loneliness at Mount Mercy and about how I didn't have any idea who I would live with the following fall. Less than two days later, a girl I was in a Bible study with at Mount Mercy, Christina, asked me to be roommates with her and two other girls when we returned in the fall. It was so out-of-the-blue and so exciting. Not to be overdramatic or anything, but I was honored to be asked, and went on to live with her and some other great girls for three years after that. I never wanted to leave Mount Mercy again from that point on. (Oh, and Natalee ended up staying, too!)
All this to say that God has provided Big Time in terms of my friendships. I went from having essentially none eight years ago to having so many amazing people in my life now. His blessings have continued into my life in Omaha. On Monday, a friend delivered flowers to my office just to show love and to help get my week off to a better start than the last. Wednesday night, Lisa was in town, and she and I and Charlotte and Aleeta and Annie and Jenn walked around Lake Zorinsky, sharing struggles and victories and giggles as we walked. As the sun set on the water, I sensed both God's glory and provision.
And so now, when I get discouraged at the lack of change in my life, I think of those glow-in-the-dark stars in my Amana bedroom and all the countless ways God has fulfilled the desires of my heart since I cried out to him in prayer on an August night.
Okay, the stars weren't real; they were the glow-in-the-dark kind, stuck on my bedroom ceiling. But under those plastic stars, I was crying. I had had a rather dull summer, socially. My job was fun and my family vacation to Michigan/Ohio was fun but nothing else was fun. I think I had gotten together with a couple of friends on a couple of occassions, but only after I took the initiative to call. No one had called me, had pursued me. And so I was crying that night in August over the fact that I'd gone through so much schooling for so many years and had so very few true friends. I felt like a loser, plain and simple. I felt like no one wanted to be around me. I cried out to God and asked for change, for friendship, and for a senior year better than all the previous years combined.
I don't remember exactly how it all happened, but during my senior year of high school, I became friends with girls I'd known since 6th grade or longer, but had never had relationships with before. It was amazing what God gradually did over the course of that year in response to the summer's prayer. I made friends with Angie and Mandi, girls I'd essentially only spoken to in passing until then. I strengthened friendships with Greta and Hollan, whom I'd known since Preschool and Kindergarten. And I also got to know a girl named Aroea.
High school graduation was far sadder for me than it would've been had I ended high school after my junior year. After all these years I had finally made friends with these great girls and then, just like that, we had to graduate and go our separate ways. I didn't really expect many of these friendships (other than Greta and Hollan, who also lived in Amana) to continue into college. I pretty much thought it was the end.
That fall, I moved up to Cedar Rapids to attend Mount Mercy. I made friends, at least in the nominal sense, fairly quickly, but still felt shy and anxious and didn't quite know if I fit or even if I should stay. When we returned after Christmas break of my freshman year, my friend Natalee told me she was going to transfer. Another friend planned to as well. When Natalee broke the news, I went to my room and cried because I'd already felt so lonely and was sad that one of my closest friends was going to leave. I wondered whether I should do the same. I still hadn't quite found my niche and still wasn't loving life on the Mount.
It was February, and I remember standing in the shower in Regina Hall, crying. I was crying so much that I couldn't tell where the shower water ended and my tears began. I felt lonely and unloved, to tell you the truth. But that next week, everything changed.
Out of the blue, I got an email from Aroea (you know- one of the friendships I didn't expect to last past high school) inviting me to join her and some of her new friends from Kirkwood/church on Friday night. I was delighted at the invitation and went down to Iowa City to see her and meet her friends. That was the first time I met Kevin, her now-husband. We had a fun night, and afterwards I stayed over at her parents' house in Oxford. We stayed up talking until 2:00 in the morning. We talked about the struggles we each had faced in middle school and high school, and it was actually the first time I heard the whole story of how she almost ended it all, and how God had saved her from that doom. Right then and there, as I lay across the room in her sister Rohana's bed, I realized how much darker my life would have been had she been successful and had we never become friends in Mr. Francis' Journalism class senior year. In the dark, I walked across the room and just hugged her. She was surprised at the gesture. We were both crying. We both agree that was the moment when we became real, true, lifelong friends. If you'd have told me even one year before that time that I'd end up in her wedding, or that she'd end up baptizing me someday, I wouldn't have believed it.
During the course of that weekend, I told Aroea about my loneliness at Mount Mercy and about how I didn't have any idea who I would live with the following fall. Less than two days later, a girl I was in a Bible study with at Mount Mercy, Christina, asked me to be roommates with her and two other girls when we returned in the fall. It was so out-of-the-blue and so exciting. Not to be overdramatic or anything, but I was honored to be asked, and went on to live with her and some other great girls for three years after that. I never wanted to leave Mount Mercy again from that point on. (Oh, and Natalee ended up staying, too!)
All this to say that God has provided Big Time in terms of my friendships. I went from having essentially none eight years ago to having so many amazing people in my life now. His blessings have continued into my life in Omaha. On Monday, a friend delivered flowers to my office just to show love and to help get my week off to a better start than the last. Wednesday night, Lisa was in town, and she and I and Charlotte and Aleeta and Annie and Jenn walked around Lake Zorinsky, sharing struggles and victories and giggles as we walked. As the sun set on the water, I sensed both God's glory and provision.
And so now, when I get discouraged at the lack of change in my life, I think of those glow-in-the-dark stars in my Amana bedroom and all the countless ways God has fulfilled the desires of my heart since I cried out to him in prayer on an August night.
Me, Annie, Charlotte, Lisa and Aleeta at church this morning.
posted by Nicole VZ at 8:04 PM
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