Today was a good day.
I don’t know how to explain it best, but I’m learning how to choose my friendships wisely.
2011 was a hard year for me when it came to relationships. I’ve never been that great at making friends and last year I saw more friends go than come. In a world where we seek to gather and produce and gain, losing more than we accumulate is never a good thing.
“Don’t spend more money than you make.”
“Don’t eat more calories than you burn.”
“Don’t giveaway more than you need to get by yourself.”
But He says we must lose to gain, and if we try to keep we will lose. After last year, as difficult as it was, I believe that very much.
I’ve spent the last eight months letting go. Opening my hands and simply letting go.
So I spent today with some of the people that have remained, the ones that now feel like family to me and this, I know, is true community.
Jesus, let me be thankful for what you have taken away and let me see with new eyes what you have let remain. Help me to open my hands daily and let it all go, not so that I will gain, but so that I will trust you more. Let me be wise in the choices I make and deepen and enrich the relationships that I do have. Thank you for each person that you have placed near to my heart. I know each one is a gift from You.
Oh, bringing tears to my eyes. Happy for you, so happy. Hoping I can look back a year from now and have the same perspective. Praying to find my community.
Thank you Brenna!! praying for you today too!
I can totally relate to this post…except I’m closer to the middle of the experience than the end. So many friendships are ending and not many are left. I know it means a new season is coming but the process feels a bit devastating at times. Your post encourages me that God is in control and I’m not alone in experiencing this!
What a great time in my life to read this! My husband and I have really been struggling to find true community this past year after moving once we got married. While it may seem as though I “have” to keep fighting to hang onto friendships I thought would last, I’m realizing that maybe letting go of them maybe isn’t such a bad thing. Praying for God’s will and that those of us seeking true community will be patient and strong while we sort through all we need to let go in order to find what we can gain.
This post made me happy for many reasons. I’m so glad to know you are having a good time. xoxo
Thank you for this. I never really stopped to think that those relationships I lost 17 months ago could be something God used to help me grow – that I didn’t need those friends. It still hurts, but maybe now I can stop feeling betrayed when I think of specific people – and instead think of this.
I know this pain…so thankful for God’s gift to you this weekend…may His love fill the soul holes from this past year…the places of letting go that made more room for Him…for others…and drink it all in deeply…enjoying your quenched heart being given drinks for your soul. blessings to you~
This is your worship, you know. It blesses His heart. The surrendering into what He allowed. And your willingness. And your gratefulness. Just so beautiful. And encouraging. Bless you, sweet Sarah.
Thank you for this post…….2011 was a difficult year for me and my family. Lots of changes, including loss of friendships…but God has remained faithful. While giving up lots of things I have held onto to, He has drawn me close to Him. I now have a saved marriage, a couple of true friends, and overall mental health! Thanks for your realness and encouragement!
I get it. And I struggle with lack of friendships that exist in my area. (I have friends, just not in the same vicinity I now live.) I’m extremely introverted, and to be honest, I haven’t had this much trouble making friends since elementary school. Long story short, I live in a very tight 4 generational Catholic community in which everyone knows each other and those from the outside are called ‘outsiders’. I’m an outsider. I had a baby this year and no one noticed until after the fact. It was somewhat heartbreaking to me because I wanted other people to be excited for our little miracle….but I’ve learned now that it is so important to be the change, to love on people who are new and different. I won’t say that I don’t still hurt or that I don’t cry because some days are difficult. But I know that the friends I do have are exceedingly precious….I just wish I could see them more often. I was praying that God would bring me a friend, but then I just asked that He help me be genuine and myself.
I’m in the same situation as you in regards to having friends, but having moved last year with my husband – leaving those friends as we left (we see them as much as is possible), and trying to make some within our current community. I had similar realizations as you did, and I wrote about them in my latest post on friendship (you can click on my name to be led to my website, the post is on my blog and was written on September 7, 2012). Hang in there.
I know it’s tough… God has bigger plans for us! All for His glory. 
-Anna
This is lovely, Sarah! Thankful for you that this is a time for you to open your hands and receive fresh friendship in place of what you have let go of.
Whoa. Just read this and tracked back to your posts from 2011. In January of 2011 I also declared it was going to be an amazing, stand-out year, full of change (happy change) and growth (the non-painful kind). Literally 5 days into January, my world seemed to collapse with the ending (out of the blue) of my dearest friendship of more than 15 years, for reasons I still don’t fully understand. It was the most painful thing, which affected many other relationships. Like you, I’ve spent the last many months letting go, letting the Lord bring new relationships into my life, examining what makes a good friend for me, choosing friends a little more wisely, etc. It has been hard to trust and hard to let go, but I am getting there. So yes, my year was full of change and growth, but in the complete opposite way that I’d had in my mind. I loved your post about the treasures from the sea. God has unearthed some of these treasures for me in the last year, and I am so thankful. Love how those shells and rocks that are still there after the tide goes out are the most beautiful.
Those pictures are so inviting, of course I always love the beach.
And I enjoy your blog too and if we lived closer would love to get to know you better.
Friendships are hard but so worth it if we find a few to share with.
Pray and God will bring your desire to your heart.
take care
These photos are so awesome! Just beautiful. I think I need to open up my hands too. I like what you said about doing so not to receive but to trust Christ more. That can be so hard to do!! Yet so wonderful when I do it. I have a choice. Do I want to close my hands into a grip and not let go (as if I have the control anyway) or open my hands to freely let go and perhaps receive? I like the image of keeping my hands open. As someone else commented, it truly is an act of worship — opening our hands up to God, so to speak, instead of clutching onto things He may not want us to have.
Thank you for this incredibly timely post. It has been a while since I have entered the online community that I once followed almost daily! However, I have had one of those years too and you have no idea how incredibly timely this post was and the fact that I am on here!
) This past year has been brutal and has made me want to just give up. I have been lamenting recently about my lack of friends, community, family. We are the only Christians in our families (my hubby and I) and therefore we have been rejected, so naturally we look to our church community. However, these past few years I feel like we have been on a whirlwind adventure of moves, etc. and it has been so hard to make community. We finally came back to a place where we had a great community and everything collapsed. We were burned so bad, I now have some serious trust issues and really don’t want to put myself out there anymore. Like some of the others who have commented on here, I have had friendships completely disintegrate and I have no idea what happened. Friends that I have had since high school have completely rejected me. In fact we went to the same church and she walked right by me and my family (and yes my new born son) like we didn’t even exist. I even asked her if I had offended her in any way and she just gave me some ridiculous answer that never even answered my question. That was just the start. It has been brutal, even my 5 year old son had the worst start to his school year. Being the newbie, he was constantly told that he wasn’t their friend, on the friend scale of 0 to 10 he was zero, etc. It was horrible—and yes this was kindergarten! This just goes to show you what the community was like. It has been nuts…..friends completely lying to us, stealing from us, telling us that we had demons—nuts! Thank you for this post. I guess I have a lot to evaluate and I really pray that I find a community soon!