Well, if I wasn’t sure what it felt like to be an “adult” before, I think I’m a lot closer now. I’m working as a nanny/babysitter very close to full time (plus taking an online class), I commute to work almost every day, and I live with my husband in our own place. We have bills for goodness sake! Oh yes, I think that I can definitely say that I’m practically all grown up.

But maybe being a grownup isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

After all, now that I’ve reached this oh-so-elite position in life, I seem to find myself with a lot more responsibility on my plate and a lot less time to handle it all. Now working isn’t just about making money for gas and date nights, it’s about survival! If we don’t pay our bills, we will have serious consequences to face. And working enough to make ends meet here in Orange County, California is not exactly the easiest task, especially when your job only pays $10 an hour.

Not only has making money become more important, but now we also have more responsibility to take care of ourselves. We are the ones who decide what to buy at the grocery store, what to cook for dinner, and when to go to the gym. And even though we technically already did this when we lived with my parents, it seems to have so much more gravity now that we are officially on our own. Those little nagging reminders can’t motivate us anymore!

The sharing of housekeeping responsibilities has changed for us, too. In our apartment, there’s only so much space and the two of us. There is no excuse for leaving messes or not doing the chores—when there are only two people in a home, you can’t exactly shift the responsibility for cleaning to somebody else. You either do it, or the house is dirty. That can cause a lot of conflict, if you don’t communicate well!

And so, between the many things that fill our lives such as taking care of ourselves health-wise, keeping our apartment clean, attempting to maintain our social lives, doing church activities, and most of all working, it can certainly be difficult to maintain our bounce in life, let alone in our marriage. The bottom line is that life is draining, and sometimes it seems like we’re doing all of this stuff just to turn around and do more! When do we get to just stop and enjoy it?

The answer is… never. Well ok, that’s actually just the answer to the first part. We never get to stop, not really, at least not until the apocalypse. But even though that part’s kind of a drag, the good news is that we can still enjoy life (and marriage!) even through the work.

I think there are a few major necessities to achieve this. The first is to remain focused on God. Technically, I should say that the first requirement is to know God. Getting to know and focusing on God really puts life into perspective and fills you with a joy like no other; it also gives you a purpose, which is the next key ingredient.

Purpose is key to enjoying work in life. People want to know that what they are doing has meaning and is worthwhile. Having a purpose in life gives you motivation to get through the harder times and lets you feel fully fulfilled in the great times. And of course, you know that I’m going to tell you that the only way to find your true purpose in life is through God. He made you, after all, and He did that for a reason. Dare to find out what it is!

Passion is also a vitally important part of enjoying your work. If you love what you do, then you’re going to love doing it! Even though that probably should go without saying, I think many people need a reminder. It’s simple; if your job involves something you are passionate about, then working won’t be nearly as taxing. And God has the perfect job for you in mind, the job that you will love to do and that will make an eternal difference for Him in the world.

For me, the most vital ingredient for enjoying life besides Jesus is simply having fun! Everybody needs time to wind down and relax. Watching my favorite tv shows with my husband in the evening is one of the highlights of my day. I also enjoy cooking, playing with my pets, reading, writing (of course!) and listening to music. Using free moments to do things like this throughout my day makes working a lot easier, because it breaks up the monotony. Even if it’s just taking a 15 minute break to read my latest favorite book or listening to my ipod while I work out, those little things really do help.

All of these key ingredients also apply to enjoying marriage to its fullest! Focusing on God and your spiritual health as a couple puts your life in perspective and strengthens your relationship in amazing ways. Remembering the purpose of marriage motivates you to be the kind of spouse that God wants you to be—and doing that is incredibly fulfilling. Needless to say, passion in marriage is obviously important. Keeping the romance alive can go a very very long way to putting a skip in your step. So make the effort! Last, never forget to have fun together. Do something adventurous, be goofy, laugh and make jokes, and remember that you aren’t just husband and wife, you’re friends too!

Life is work, and that’s just the way it is. It’s part of the price that we humans had to pay when we decided to break God’s law, part of the consequences for failing to live up to His perfect standards. But just like Jesus provided a way for us to be redeemed for our imperfections, God also provides a way for us to enjoy our lives each day. The same goes for marriage. A good marriage is a lot of work, no doubt. But just like life, a good marriage is full of joy just waiting for you to find it.

Well, it’s official! Cory and I are moved into our new apartment. Yes, I know that just a week ago we were still contemplating our options. But I personally believe that when God has something in mind for you, He can make it happen pretty quickly. And for us, that’s exactly what went down.

Last Sunday, we started looking around at apartments just out of curiosity. We put a budget together beforehand and we knew what we could afford as far as rent, utilities, and move-in costs, so we had an idea of what we were looking for. With that, off we went to check out our options. The second apartment complex that we looked at had us hooked. The best part was, they said we could move in on Friday!

Now, after a very long week of waiting and preparing, we are officially here. The move in was quite an adventure, considering that we are on the third floor. We had to move not only our stuff (we have a lot more than we realized!) but also a couch, table, bed, and the rest of our furniture, which we also had to pick up from various stores at different days and times throughout the weekend. It was the most exhausting three days I think I’ve ever had, and we aren’t even done unpacking yet! But we are having so much fun setting up our new home together, and it is totally worth all of the effort.

But anyway, I just wanted to write a quick update for my readers about what’s been going on this week. Now, I’ve got more unpacking to do!

Thanks for reading. =]

For the past two weeks or so, my husband and I have been contemplating getting a place of our own. For those of my readers who don’t know, we currently live with my parents. We decided that we would really like our own space, and when we realized that we can make it work financially, we started getting excited. We’ve bounced around quite a bit from idea to idea, considering everything from renting an apartment, to buying a condo, to buying a mobile home. Finally, we’ve come up with a plan.

It’s been a complicated process to figure out what we’d like to do for many reasons. First of all, we are going to Spain for my husband’s study abroad in seven months, and we’ll be there for three months. As fun as it sounds, I have to admit that it is pretty darn inconvenient. My babysitting clients will have to replace me, and who knows if I’ll be able to get those jobs back when I return. I’ll have to leave my family and my beloved pets for the longest period of time I’ve ever been away from them. And if we tried to buy a house now, by the time it actually happened we would probably only have four months or less to live there before we’d have to move out and find a renter to cover it for us for the three months that we’re in Spain. Obviously, it’s not the optimal time for us to buy a house at the moment.

Our second issue is that we own a pit bull. My dog Marley, who is one of the most harmless, sweet dogs I’ve ever known, is unfortunately banned in every apartment from here to the moon. Because of that, renting an apartment long-term isn’t an option for us. I love my dog, and I don’t want to live without him.

The third complication that we encountered was the lack of availability in condos for rent, not to mention the outrageously inflated prices. We looked at renting condos as a solution to our “dog problem,” since most condos for rent don’t have the same restrictions that apartment complexes do. But we soon realized that we could actually pay less for a mortgage than we’d be paying for rent! On top of that, I was getting nowhere in my search because of the apparently limited availability of rentals at the moment.

And so, at long last, we settled on the idea of buying. At first, we searched for condos for sale (instead of houses) in an effort to save money. That was when we had to deal with another complication— the issue of the future. Most condos for sale in our price range had one bedroom, and due to the fact that we are planning on having at least one of our kids in any house that we buy right now, it’s going to need at least two. Add that to the lack of connection we felt with any of the condos we saw, and we were at yet another dead end.

That was when we started looking at mobile homes. We were happily surprised to see that many mobile homes in our area are actually quite nice, not to mention cheap and many-bedroomed! We eagerly started searching through the options. After eliminating the “bad” neighborhoods from the search and looking through tons of photos, we had a list of four houses that we were interested in. However, when we started talking to my husband’s parents about the idea, they were concerned by the fact that “space rent” for the mobile homes costs more than the actual mortgage payments would. Cory and I were okay with that, since the mortgage payments would be so low, but his parents pointed out that it might be a better idea to buy a more expensive house and have a higher mortgage payment than to waste so much money on “rent.” And so, we’ve landed (hopefully once and for all) at buying a house.

That, of course, brought us back to the Spain problem. We don’t want to buy a house until after Spain, but we aren’t going for another seven months. It’s an amount of time that seems to be just long enough to be worth moving out, but not long enough to be worth buying a house yet. So, we realized that we have two options. We can either stay at my parents’ house for another seven months, or we can rent an apartment on a six month lease and be temporarily without Marley. We haven’t yet decided which option we are going to opt for, but we are leaning towards the apartment.

Now, you may be wondering why I’ve gone on and on about the complex details of our housing search. Part of it is to illustrate just how complex of a decision this is. Given our income level and our financial position, any decision we make as far as housing turns into a careful and fragile balancing act. This is a common struggle for new, young, married couples, or so I’ve heard. I also wanted to share all of this to make another point; my husband and I have no idea what we’re doing, really.

We don’t have a perfect plan. We didn’t know a few weeks ago that we’d be considering buying a house within the next year, and we don’t know if that plan will change in the months to come. All I know is that I started praying for God to make us a way to get our own place, and shortly after, financial opportunities cropped up for us. And throughout this whole process, we have been careful not to force anything. God has a home picked out for us, and when we find it, everything else will fall into place. It’s that trust in Him that has kept us patiently searching, reworking, and reconsidering all of our options. It’s trust in Him that allows us to be at peace with whatever situation He calls us to be in; whether that means continuing to live with my parents for the next seven months, living without Marley temporarily, or anything else. We know that we are going to be where He wants us to be, and we willfully leave the control over that in His capable hands.

My husband and I are very excited and hopeful about our new plans to buy a house later this year. We have lots of fun visualizing what our lives will be like in a new place, and we honestly are very eager to make our own home together as a family. But overall, the most important things to us are that we do it all on God’s agenda and that we’re together. That’s what a marriage is, after all, isn’t it? Togetherness under God? Well I certainly think so, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Dreams are great. They give you something to aspire to, something to look forward to. Looking ahead to things in the future can be very encouraging when today isn’t so great. But dreams take this a step farther. Dreams are something big that you hope to do or become in the future. They aren’t just events or special moments that you are anticipating—they are bigger than that. They are your future. Or so you hope.

One interesting thing about dreams is that they change. Personally, my dreams for the future change constantly. When I was younger, I wanted to be a veterinarian, a writer, a teacher, and at one point, a killer whale trainer. These were some of my various aspirations at different stages of my life. I’ve always wanted to be a wife, and I’ve almost always taken for granted the idea that I would one day be a mother. Now I am a wife, and very happy about that I might add, and I’m planning and hoping to make a career as a teacher’s assistant and a writer. I’m also once again planning on becoming a mother in the future.

The people who know me best know that I love planning. I love thinking about the future and plotting out how things will go. It’s very exciting to me, thinking about what I want to do when I “grow up.” Of course, I’m starting to realize that maybe there is no such thing as growing up— we’re all just bigger, older, and much more burdened versions of our child-selves. But that’s a topic for another blog post!

Anyway, as I was saying, I think that it’s fun to plan for the future. I especially think that it’s fun to plan the future with my husband, given that our future is going to be together. I like talking with him about our future house, where we’re going to live, what we’re going to do for a living, how we’re going to raise our kid (or kids), etc. Even when we don’t know for sure exactly what those answers are, it’s still fun to think about.

And that’s the other thing about dreams. Not only do they change, but as it turns out, it’s ok when they do. I know some people who feel terrified or confused when they think about the future because they don’t have a clear plan. But if you ask me, that’s nothing to worry about. One way or another, God will take care of His children. So even when you don’t have a plan or you don’t know what you’re going to do, you don’t need to panic. You can have fun thinking and planning, while still knowing that things can and probably will change, and knowing that it’ll still be awesome. Because if you are God’s child, then God will take care of you.

My husband is hoping to start his own business after graduation. He wants to be an energy auditor, and help people make their houses for eco-friendly and efficient. He doesn’t know exactly how he’s going to start his business or run it yet, but he has some ideas and most importantly, he has a dream. It can be scary sometimes though, when I think about us first getting started after college. I’ll be an inexperienced writer with an associate’s degree in liberal studies, searching for a job as a teacher’s assistant; my husband will be a new graduate with his bachelor’s degree in liberal arts and plans to start a business. We somehow expect to make a survivable income on this. Will it work? Maybe. Will we survive? Absolutely.

And I guess that’s the adventurous part. We don’t really know if our current dreams will come true, or if we’ll even have these same dreams in a few years. We don’t know if our plans will fall through. But it’s alright because we will be ok. We will survive, even if our dreams don’t. That is part of daring to dream— accepting the possibility of failure.

In a marriage, it is important to support one another’s dreams. You may have to sacrifice things in order to make room for his or her dreams. Your spouse should do the same for you. The result is two people, fully supported by their significant other and pursuing their dreams. That is how marriages should be! I’ve heard it said that people should make sure that their dreams align before they get married. I say (for the most part) that that’s ridiculous. Even if your dream is to live in Africa and help orphans while your spouse’s dream is to live in Tennessee and open a horse rescue, your commitment to each other should be stronger than your individual dreams for the future. A marriage requires compromise, and not just compromise, but a sincere willingness to give up things for one another. That way, nobody gets bitter. You compromise joyfully and find a way to either develop new (and possibly similar) dreams, or you find a way to make both of your dreams succeed. In this case, the couple could go to Africa several times a year for mission trips to help orphans and live the rest of the time in Tennessee at the horse rescue, for instance. It’s a simple matter of being flexible. And if you are committed enough to get married, than certainly you should be committed enough to bend a little for each other’s benefit.

So there you have it. I have a dream. But it’s not the end-all, be-all of my future. It’s just good fun! Of course, my current dreams might come true after all; I just won’t know until I get there.

Lately, I’ve been having a sort of identity crisis. Only a few weeks ago, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted in life. I was going to be a writer and a homemaker, have two children (at least one girl), and be a homeschool teacher for them and for other children. Recently though, I haven’t been sure of much of anything. I’ve started to question whether I even really wanted to have kids. Between the childbirth, the 24/7 job of taking care of children, the potential for heartbreak when they mess up in life, and the difficulty of raising them well, I’m just not sure anymore. Which of course, puts a kink in my plan for being mainly a stay home mom.

Besides the whole motherhood debate, I’ve also been questioning my potential as a writer. Basically, it is very difficult to make a living as a novelist. It doesn’t provide a dependable salary, and you could very well write an entire novel and then not be able to get it published. Then, if you do manage to get it published, there’s the problem of selling it. There are so many books out there, and a lot of them are really good! Who on earth would even notice mine, let alone be persuaded to buy it? My fear is that nobody would.

Even if people did buy my books, I’m not confident that that could ever be enough to fully support me. Living costs a lot, and novelists don’t usually make that much off of their books. Thus, the ends don’t meet.

This train of thought has me deeply questioning what I am going to do with my life. After all, if my husband and I decide not to have kids and it’s not likely that I can make a living as a writer, then I can’t do either of the things that I’d planned on! And if I don’t know what I want to do, then that leaves me wondering if I’m making the right decision as far as college goes. Is it really smart for me to get an associate’s degree, which truthfully does not make you qualified for many jobs at all, if I don’t know what I want to do?

That was when I realized it. Or, I should say, I remembered it. I remembered how clearly God had told me to carry out my plan for school. When I was originally trying to make the decision about whether or not to leave my university in order to pursue an associate’s degree at the local community college, I asked God to point me in the right direction. And He did! He gave me four very clear (if not humorous) indications that it was ok for me to do just that. So the decision was made.

My recent confusion led me to remember that. That, in turn, let me to understand something very important; I am not making my life decisions based on me, I’m making them based on God. Sure, sometimes God doesn’t seem to have a preference about what I decide, and in those times I do decide based on what I want. But in this case, I had to remember that even though I thought that I was leaving my university because that is what I wanted, in reality I am leaving because God told me to. That is so comforting to me!

Even if my old plan is not so certain any more, God’s plan is. As long as I am trusting God’s plan instead of my own plan, I know that I’m in good hands.

So no, I don’t know exactly (or at all) what I want to do with my life. I don’t know if I want to be a parent or a writer anymore. I don’t know how I am going to make a living or support myself and my husband. I have some ideas, sure, but that isn’t very comforting when it comes to your financial security. But despite that, I’m not freaking out. I know that God has a plan for me and that He will take care of me. It’s all about whether or not I can trust Him. And I most definitely do.

My husband and I are on a journey together. Many couples get married later in life when they already know what they want to do, or are even doing it already. They often have a clear preference when it comes to having children, and in many cases they know exactly how many they will have and what their names will be. Funnily enough, this was my husband and I just a few months ago (well, except the part about getting married later in life).

Now, we are uncertain. He has a much clearer idea of what he wants to do than I do, but it is still somewhat uncertain whether he can succeed at it. Neither of us know if we want kids at all anymore, let alone how many. But we are together, and we are protected by the God of the universe. That is what a marriage is supposed to look like; two people who are tied together through everything and anything, following God’s leadings with contented faith. We have what we need, because God provides it. We don’t need to know the rest right now.

God wants me to trust Him, and that means letting go of my plans for my life and embracing His plan instead, even if I don’t know what that is yet. And you know what? I feel so much more secure this way. After all, this is God we’re talking about. He probably knows just a little bit more than I do.

This week was the first full week back in school for my husband and I. It’s been a really busy week trying to settle in to our new schedules and fitting in all of the other activities we want to do as well. Making it even harder was the fact that we both had to change our class schedules in the middle of the week.

We had decided that it would be fun to take a class together this year, so we’d both registered for a “Critical Reading and Writing” course that seemed interesting to us. Unfortunately, on the first day of class we realized what a mistake that was. The professor was, to put it kindly, a tad bit unorthodox. He spent the majority of the class period ranting unintelligibly about the philosophical process of reading and writing. He also randomly began yelling at us with a generous use of profanity several times, and for no apparent reason. Besides that, the class was clearly going to take a much less practical direction than either of us had expected, and once we discovered that, neither of us were interested in the class anymore. By the time the first day of class rolled around and we figured all of this out though, we had less than 24 hours to find new classes to replace it with.

Eventually I settled on taking “Health and Wellness,” since it was one of the only open classes left that would fit in my schedule and it’s a graduation requirement anyway. Cory chose a high level “Public Economics” class for the same reason; it was one of only a few open classes that would fit in his schedule, and the only one that he was remotely interested in. Luckily for me, “Health and Wellness” has turned out to be my favorite class this semester. Unfortunately for my husband, though, his class choice turned out to be a bad one. On the first day, he was told that the class has an unspoken prerequisite of calculus, which he’s never learned, and that a very thorough and detailed understanding of basic economics is vital as well. On top of that, the professor told him that it will be impossible for him to take another upper level course at the same time as this one, but he was already enrolled in another upper level course that he enjoys. In other words, the class is completely over his head. To compound the problem, the deadline to change class schedules had already passed when he had his first day of the class.  So now he is stuck with a class that he can’t pass, with no way of changing it.

After all of this chaos, my husband and I came to a conclusion. Ever since we first came to our university, we’ve had a lot of trouble with financial aid, bad professors, bad courses, unhelpful faculty, a spiritually hostile environment, a degree program we weren’t interested in, and an inability to affect change in any of these areas. As a result of the new problems we’ve already been dealing with this year, we finally decided that we didn’t belong at this school and we started seriously looking into transferring. The decision was almost made for us to withdraw and move on, when we realized that there were some insurmountable difficulties for us in transferring. To sum it up, our university’s curriculum is essentially incompatible with any other college’s. As a result, very few of our units would transfer anywhere else and we would basically have to start over wherever we went. Clearly, this was not an option for us. And so, all of our hopes for a better college experience were promptly squashed, and the sobering reality sunk in that we are, in fact, stuck at this school.

We were still dealing with that reality when we went to church on Thursday night. Little did we know that God had something very important to say to us!

The message at church was about troubles in life. More specifically, it was about why we have them and how to handle them. During many points during the message, our pastor mentioned ideas that seemed to be directly for us. Oh yes, I have no doubt that God was speaking to us that night. And this is what He told us:

God allows us to go through circumstances in life that aren’t always pleasant in order to teach us things. He lets us go through troubles in order to make our characters more like Jesus. By dealing with trials, we develop endurance and learn to rely on God more. In fact, the Bible tells us to rejoice in the face of trials! Does this mean that we have to be happy about bad things that happen to us? No. It means that we should learn to praise God despite bad things that happen to us. Not only does this bring glory to God, but it’s the way that we experience true joy. If we can praise God even during the bad times in life, that’s really saying something. God wants to bring us comfort and peace during these times, and keeping our hearts open to Him instead of closing them off allows Him to do that. Trusting His wisdom and goodness is the trick to getting through trials without losing your joy.

For Cory and I, being stuck at a university that we really don’t like is a difficult trial. At first, we didn’t understand why this was happening to us, or why there was nothing that we could do about it. But at church God reminded us about His promise to use all bad things for the good. Although we don’t necessarily know what God wants to teach us through this particular trial, we do trust that He knows what He is doing. That doesn’t mean that I like being at this school any more than I did a few days ago, but it does mean that I’m not going to let it make me bitter. I’m determined to praise God for all of the blessings that He has given me, and for being the amazing and beautiful Creator that He is. Thinking about that is enough to put a smile on my face every day, no matter where I am or what I’m doing.

So what about you? Will you praise God through your trials? If you do, I promise that you will find a sense of peace and joy that nothing else can give you.

Well, it’s official. I am now a married woman! Almost three weeks ago, my husband and I said our vows and celebrated our new lives together in the presence of many great friends and family members. It was a beautiful day that we will always remember, and I’m so glad that it’s over. Sure, it makes me feel a bit reminiscent when I think about how I’ll never have a wedding day again and how my special moment is over and gone forever. But to be completely honest, it’s a huge relief to be done with it. Planning a wedding truly is a stressful and time consuming job! Fortunately for me, the majority of the nine months that I spent planning were not particularly stressful (at least not because of anything wedding-related). The only really hectic time was the week before, but one week of over-the-top busyness is quite enough for me. And truly, I feel more happy to be married now than I could ever have felt about any special day, no matter how significant. Not to mention the awesome two weeks we got to spend afterwards on our honeymoon!

Of course, in the crazy lives of college students there always seem to be new things happening. For us, the next big thing was a weekend trip to Catalina Island for a church retreat, which we just returned from on Monday. That is what I really want to talk about!

For those of you who don’t know what a church retreat is, here’s a quick explanation; a church retreat is like a mini vacation that you go on with other people from your church for the purpose of enjoying one another’s company, and more importantly, enjoying God and getting to know Him better. They can be anywhere and anytime, from a snowy mountain camp in the winter to a beach-side camp in the summer, but they are all typically camp-style. In other words, you stay in a cabin with a bunch of other people of the same gender and eat planned meals in a cafeteria. You sleep in a sleeping bag, don’t have to wear makeup, and sometimes don’t have electricity. Best of all, you get to spend several hours a day if not more just learning about God, praying, worshiping, and otherwise growing closer to Him. It’s absolutely wonderful!

My husband and I just went on one such trip this past weekend, and it was one of the best spiritual experiences either of us have ever had. I learned so many great things about how God works and came to peace with many of the concerns, doubts, and questions I had before. For example, I discovered that God speaking is not some magical experience that you can’t ignore. He speaks in so many different ways and most of the time, it’s not “supernatural” at all. His voice is also very easy to ignore if you aren’t listening. As a woman who always wondered why I never heard God speak to me, this new information was extremely comforting. I found out that God has been speaking to me all along, and that I just need to learn to recognize it and stop looking so hard. It was right there in front of me the whole time!

Cory told me that he also learned a lot about God speaking and that he heard God’s voice in ways that he never had before. I personally saw my husband grow in his relationship with God so much this weekend, and I can’t even begin to explain how proud and happy that makes me.

All of this to say that I am developing a new obsession for Jesus. Fortunately, an obsession for Jesus is always a good thing and falling in love with Him over and over again is life-changing. I am a different person when I’m falling in love with Jesus than I am when I’m putting him on hold; I’m a more loving wife, a more patient and considerate daughter, a more caring friend, a more confident woman, and a ridiculously more joyful person. There is no greater sense of peace than the one that comes from putting God at the front and center of your life.

I’m praying for all of my readers to either discover Jesus for the first time or fall in love with Him more than ever before. I’m praying that all of my readers who are married, especially, remember to keep God in the very center of their marriages. There is no greater way to ensure marital success than to share yourselves spiritually with each other and with the God who created love.

If you want to talk to me about anything in this blog, please feel free to find me on facebook and send me a message! Just search for Heather Westropp. If you don’t use facebook of course (and I don’t blame you), you can always email me at heather@heatherwestropp.com. I’d love to hear your comments, concerns, thoughts, and anything else you’d like to share with me.

Thanks again for reading!

Lately, I’ve begun to realize just how important it is to have friends besides your significant other. Okay, so it hasn’t really taken me this long to see that. But it has taken me this long to finally discover that finding friends is not only possible, but completely worth the trouble.

My struggle with friendships started after I met Cory. Part of the reason was that we were in high school at the time, and I suppose that none of my friends really understood what it was like to truly be in love. As a result, we were essentially ousted from our group of otherwise single friends. Being intentionally excluded from activities and events with our friends was very hard on me. I did not understand why I should have been punished for finding the love of my life. Now, looking back, it is much easier to at least understand how my friends might have felt, even if I still believe that what they did was wrong.

Either way though, being pushed out of our group of friends only pushed me closer to Cory. He went from being one of my best friends and my boyfriend to my only close friend. Sure, I still kept in touch with my high school friends and hung out with them at school, but none of them really knew me or got any quality time with me. I didn’t think that I needed friends. Plus, nobody really wanted to be friends with me anyway, so what was the use? That was what I thought at the time, at least.

In my senior year, things changed a little. Cory had graduated the year before, as well as most of our friends. It was just me and the only other girl in our group, Sarah, left at school. So naturally we grew closer and tried to repair the damage from the past two years. It was an up and down friendship for me, but at the very least we knew each other well again. I could say I had a female friend, and I knew that was good for me. When the time came for graduation and moving on to college, we were pretty close and I was determined to keep our friendship alive even as I moved to my new dorm and met tons of new people from my university. For a while, all was well. We went to church together every week, and often spent time just sitting and talking for hours afterward. It felt good to have a friend, and I was mostly happy.

A few months ago though, everything changed again. I realized that my friendship with this girl wasn’t healthy for me, and that I couldn’t trust her or even be myself around her. A lot of other drama happened at the same time, and I finally decided that it was time to move on. I ended our friendship after six and a half years, and with it I lost the ease of hanging out with the other people from our high school gang. If I want to hang out with them now, I have to make sure that my ex- best friend won’t be there. We will probably never hang out as a group again like we used to, and seeing my circle of friends crumble so quickly like that was painful. I was left with no real friends, and I had to start over.

That’s when two amazing girls from my old high school small group popped back into my life. For those of you who do not know what a “small group” is, it is a church-organized group of about five to ten people who get together weekly to study the Bible, pray, and support each other through life. My high school small group was not perfect by any means, but I can say that I got two of my best friends out of it. Halston and Taylor randomly came back into my life at the moment I needed friends the most. Not only are they godly women who can help keep me on the right track with my relationship with God, but they’ve also known me for two years now and they are two of the most caring girls I’ve ever met. They also were more than happy to step in as bridesmaids and take over where my old friend left off, which has been a huge blessing. Sharing friendships with these girls has brightened my life tremendously.

That being said, they are only two people. Even with them in my life, I’ve often felt alone at times when Cory was my only companion because they’ve had to work or were otherwise busy. I’ve also sometimes felt like a third wheel when I did hang out with them, because they both know each other so well and are really close. In my loneliness, I started to fear that something was wrong with me. I worried that nobody would want to be my friend, that I would never truly belong, and that I would never have a best friend (or at least not a best girl friend) again. I clung to the support that Cory gave me as my only best friend, and tried to stay strong with the knowledge that God is all I really need anyway, but inside I felt alone and unloved.

Throughout this time, I was fortunately blessed to have my amazing stepmom, Kim, by my side. She is more of a friend to me than a mother (I already have one of those! Love you mom!), and she has been a precious friend to me through all of this. She is a constant source of support, encouragement, and godly wisdom. Despite losing my other best friend, I can gladly say that Kim was always there for me and always will be. Even when I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere, I always had the ease of my friendship with Kim to keep me afloat.

It was in this time of uncertainty that something crazy happened; that crazy thing is also known as April, Flo, Morgan, and Shanna. These are the girls who dove headfirst into my heart when I met them by joining a new college small group. Since I’ve met them, we’ve slowly gotten to know one another and spent some time hanging out. Recently, things have just been clicking and I feel like I have best friends again. Whenever I hang out with these chicas, I have so much fun. We get goofy and have a ton of laughs, but the best part is that behind it all, we are united as a sisterhood of girls who love Jesus with all of our hearts. Being part of this group has made me feel whole in a way that I haven’t felt in a very long time. It is a huge blessing! I finally understand what friendship is supposed to feel like, and why it’s so important.

Having good friends in your life is vital. As a Christian, having a group of close friends who can push you in your relationship with God is mandatory. It helps you grow closer to God and makes you accountable to somebody. Most of all, it fills your heart with the kind of joy that God had in mind for you. Experiencing the love of other Christian girls has made me stronger in my faith and has given me a new dimension of happiness that I can then bring into my relationship with Cory.

As far as Christian marriages go, I think it is utterly important for both the husband and the wife to have close Christian friends of the same sex. For one thing, it gives you some time away from each other so that you appreciate the time you do have together more. Another benefit is that it gives you time to be girly or masculine in a way that you can’t always be with your spouse. It also builds up a support system for when you go through hard times. Even though your spouse should be your second biggest source of support after God, having friends to help you through is important too. That’s because you cannot depend on only one person for everything. Nobody is perfect, and your spouse is no exception. Friends are there to fill in the gaps.

The last reason that I feel that this is so important is that I believe God designed us to be social creatures. I feel that part of His plan for us is to experience community and friendship with other believers. These kinds of friendships make us more well-rounded as individuals, and they make us whole. Since a marriage is made up of two individuals, it only makes sense that a healthy, happy marriage is made up of two healthy, happy individuals. And having good friends is a huge part of being healthy and happy, simply because God designed us that way.

I hope that your friendships are encouraging and godly, and that they bring you joy. If they aren’t, then I strongly encourage you to keep looking. I didn’t think that I would fit in anywhere, but here I am surrounded by seven amazing, God-loving women who love me and understand me like good friends should.