Satisfied By Love...Day 17

I admit that jealousy has inched it's way in.  All of these posts I've read about the Relevant conference have left me feeling like I missed out.  Missed my chance for new relationships.  Real life friendships.  Faces and personalities to go with names and blog stories.

Friendships with other women take work for me.  There is a desire for someone to know me deeply-even the parts that are real and ugly.  Especially the parts that are real and ugly I think.  And for them to accept me anyway.  There is a desire to know someone willing to let me know them the same way.  To just walk through life together without judgment or assumptions or comparisons or falsehood.

I sat with two women like that tonight after dinner.  I've been sitting with them for 11 weeks.  Two women looking for real.  For honesty.  For someone to relate to their messy life.  Their feelings of guilt.  Their heartache.  Their praise.  Their thanksgiving.

We sat there and I realized that it doesn't need to be a conference full of women (although that is a wonderful setting for relationship building and I hope one day to participate) or a book study or a mom's group.  Right here as we fill our physical bodies with heaps of love in the form of cheesy potatoes and jello salad and warm buttery rolls we fill our hearts as we ask about interviews and struggles with parents and dirty floors and bills that can't be paid and answered prayer and what God is teaching us.

It takes honest questions and honest answers.  We want people to see the good.  The put together.  Not the stuff that makes us look weak.  But Paul boasted in his weakness because that's where God's glory is seen.  When we share the weakness as these ladies did tonight, we are encouraged because as we continue to walk with each other we see God meet them, they see God meet us, and we can all step forward into another day, another week, another month.  And when we all meet together in fellowship and share in God's blessing and celebrate and cry with each other, we can be satisfied.

Thank You Lord for friendship.  For sisters in Christ.  For bringing unlike people together by Your Son. For giving us the most important thing in common so we can walk through life together.  My heart feels at home tonight...