Friendship, God, and a whole lot of grace.

I am beyond grateful for this time home. The week has been nothing short of ah-mazing. God is good. He has blessed me with a beautiful place to call home... Bozeman, Montana. He has blessed me with a loving family. And He has surrounded me with some incredible people whom I like to call friends.

I have spent my week catching up with friends. And boy let me tell you it has been so encouraging. Good friendships are hard to come by these days and extremely rare. I am learning to be thankful for each friendship God has blessed me with: past and present. I came across this quote one day...

God doesn't give you the people you want, He gives you the people you need.

To help you, to hurt you, to leave you, to love you, and to make you the person you were meant to be.

Reflecting on this past year of my life this quote could not be anymore true for me. A lot has happened and well I have been learning a lot about friendship. I need to make sure I am being the friend that I want in return which means taking initiative. Seeking others out. I so often think I can go about life alone, but God has been showing me that he desires for me [us] to be in community. We are to walk together on this journey. We need people who will laugh, cry, encourage, and most importantly hold us accountable. To be honest I really suck at holding people accountable. And well this is something only God can help me with. I love how in Ephesians (one of my favorite books of the Bible) it says to be imitators of God [ch. 5]. And when I think of imitator I look at Galatians 5:22 (the fruits of the Spirit) and I ask this question: Does my life bear such fruits? 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. Each of these describes my heavenly Father. And without Him my life will truly never reflect such things. There is hope though.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

John 15:4-5

Run to God. Let go. Surrender. And allow the Spirit to move.

And one word I need to remind myself daily of is... Grace. A friend reminded me today of how God is crazy full of grace and if He is so gracious to each of us then the question is... What is keeping me from releasing such grace to the people surrounding me? 

I will end with a stunning photo of God's creation...