This weekend, I had the amazing privilege of getting to hang out with one of my college roommates. Well, sort of. We lived together for about 2 weeks, and if you count the entire semester before where I basically lived in her room, then yeah, we lived together. For a host of reasons, we ended up not living together, and then she got married and I went to Italy and our lives took completely separate paths. Then, about a year ago, we started emailing each other again, and Saturday’s meeting was a long time in the making. As we sat at a scrumptious lunch table, we noted it had been 5 years since we’d seen each other. FIVE ENTIRE YEARS.

Which is what got me thinking: having Christian friends is the best!

It didn’t matter that we hadn’t seen each other in FOREVER. It didn’t matter that we’d had our conflicts in the past. It didn’t matter that we’d lived all over the place since the last time we saw each other, or that we’d both had major life changes since then—-you know, like CHANGING OUR LAST NAMES.

What mattered was that Christ was in our hearts, and that we were sisters. Whatever negative things were in our past were overlooked and forgiven because that’s what sisters in Christ do. Whatever distance and time had separated us didn’t matter, because sisters in Christ have the most important thing in common that they never feel like strangers.

I know that God has blessed me immensely with some wonderful Christian sisters that I consider to be great friends. This year, I hope to cultivate those friendships more so that I can be sharpened by their love for our Lord (Prov. 27:17). And, I just want to give a special shout out and thank you to my wonderful, supportive, encouraging, beautiful friends who have helped make the past year so special, and who will undoubtedly help me with all of life’s unknowns in the future. Thank you for being the kind of Christian God called you to be! (Melissa, Alexandra, Brooke, Tiffany, Melissa, Emily)