I'm not even sure if I'm going to keep this blog up. Honestly, I just wanted a place to post this. I wrote it over the weekend after hanging out with some of my very close friends. Every once in a while I get introspective, and when that happens I end up doing things like this.
I don't really want to keep the blog up permanently. I sometimes feel when I blog that I end up writing to an audience and not being truly honest with myself. However, in this instance, I wanted you all to see what I'd written. I hope you like it. :)
How Friends Happen
Do you ever think about that moment? The moment when two people meet for the first time, completely undistinguishable from the moment before, and suddenly your life is altered forever. I'm not talking about soul mates. I'm not even talking about members of the opposite sex in general. I'm talking about people: Relationships that somehow have altered the course of your life, for better or for worse, no matter what you could have done.
I've been thinking a lot about my friends, lately. How much they mean to me, and how I have a handful of people in my life that I know I can depend on for practically anything. And I know they feel the same way about me. I take it for granted sometimes when I think about our relationship, because I never stop to think, "How did this happen?"
Well, last night, I did.
How does it happen? In college, you meet new people every day. Multiple new people EVERY DAY. How is that of all those people you meet, some person can come across your path and become your best friend? Your mentor? Your worst enemy?
When I look back at the moment that I met most of my friends, I'm blown away. Not many of them have a fun story. But somewhere in between that seemingly insignificant meeting and now, we've become fast friends.
College was a hard transition to me. For at least the four years of high school, I never had to walk up and introduce myself to anyone. I usually had a friend with me that was more outgoing, and he or she would do all the work for me. When I moved away, I didn't have that anymore. I was forced to get brave and introduce myself to people. I had to physically discipline myself to muster up the courage, turn to a stranger and say, "Hi, I'm Hannah."
It's scary, because with those three words, you're not just introducing yourself, but you're giving someone the opportunity to enter your life. In that one moment, you are completely vulnerable to the person on the other end of that conversation. It was never easy. The results were mixed, of course, but all those relationships started the same way.
It's so incredible, how in these seemingly simple moments, my life was drastically changed.
And it got me thinking, what would happen if we knew who these people were before the introduction? What if when we met a person for the first time we knew if they were going to be our best friend? Would it make us run toward them with fewer reservations? Would it be comforting to know that no matter what this person was going to accept us? Or would we run the other way, being afraid of commitment, or afraid of finally meeting the person that we know would help change our lives?
Maybe that’s how we feel about Jesus. When we realize that this man can change our lives forever, when we realize that this person already knows absolutely everything about us, when we realize there’s no pressure to be someone we’re not, half us run toward Him with open arms. The release from the pressure and pain that has haunted us our whole lives is gone in that one moment. Our best friend, our soul mate, our Father, the person that we have been missing and searching for our whole lives is finally here.
And some of us run the other way, because the thought of one person knowing absolutely everything about us scares us more than anything in this world. So we hide. We search through life alone, hoping that one day we’ll meet someone or something else that will fill us in the way we never could.
What if we stopped running? What if we finally walked up to the One who is waiting to make us whole, the One we knew could change everything? What if we finally got brave and said, “Hi, I’m Hannah.”
