This weeks promptFriend*

GO:
Making friends doesn’t come naturally to me. Ever since I was seven, and asked the girl in the patent leather shoes to be my friend. When she looked at me straight in the eye and replied, ‘No.’, something in me shriveled up.

To put my heart on the line, to offer it in friendship to would-be girlfriends was harder than offering it to boys. And I spent many years under this operating pattern, until sophomore year of college. That year was a turning point in my life, bringing with it a devastating trauma and new life in Christ, all within months. And I lived in a small townhouse with 7 other girls.

We met weekly for a self-led Bible/book study. We prayed together. We ate together, laughed, stayed up all night talking. We also fought over who didn’t do their dishes, how high the thermostat was turned up, and cried big tears over breakups. There was a peace that came with knowing that just because you had a disagreement about shower time, you knew you’d meet in the caf for lunch later, all things repaired.

That year, my friends invited a boy to be my date. We had decided to set each other up and go out as a big group, to a fancy dinner and school dance. They knew where my heart was, and they saw thru my thinly veiled desire to be known. So they invited a boy that I didn’t know I loved yet to be my date.

That boy is out in the garage right now, painting my kitchen cabinets white. Our son is sleeping upstairs.

Those girls taught me what it means to be a friend. They taught me how to be a friend. Many of us have husbands and babies, mortgages and careers now. But when we get together {which is rare but special}, we’re 20 again, back on Riverside Avenue, in Anderson Hall.

STOP

Five Minute Friday*Linking up with Five Minute Friday at the wonderful Lisa-Jo Baker‘s. Hop over to her place to find out the full scoop behind FMF, and to visit other posts that were freely written in just five minutes.

-anna
{girl with blog}

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