Wednesday, January 11, 2006

A friendly little reminiscing


First off, I just want to say that I have started working on my future "Laugh Out Loud Monday" posts. Woowee have I got some doozies for you. They are absolutely hilarious. I am so excited for Monday to come around now just so I can start posting them. I know, I just said I can't wait for Monday. It's a little weird to me too. Secondly, today's post is a little long. Sorry. But it has a point. And you'll have to keep reading to see what it is.

I was reflecting on this past semester and I couldn't help but praise God. One of the biggest concerns I had for this past semester was that my support group was mostly gone. My mentors had all moved away and my brother had moved back home. These were the people that I went to when I had problems or needed to bounce ideas off of. This semester I was down to Jamie as my main support. Don't take that wrong, Jamie is amazing and has been wonderfully supportive. In fact, I probably wouldn't have made it without her. But I like to surround myself with people who will back me up when push comes to shove, and I had lost my surroundings.

But God provided. First off, he brought a replacement brother into my life. Now, no one can replace Matty, when you live with someone for 18 years, you kinda develop a few bonds. But, God brought someone to fill that void of brother/ good friend. He brought me another Matt. Matt Rummel is also an RA this year in the dorms and he is my age. He has been someone I can talk to and hang out with and feel comfortable knowing that he will watch my back and protect me, just as I will do the same for him.

Secondly, God brought me some great new sisters. I used to have five. I won't get into why I needed new sisters, but basically, there is a 60% chance that if you meet one of my old sisters, you will wish you hadn't. But that's a story for another day. Mackenzie, Shalyn and Nicole have become my new sisters. Mac and Shalyn were given to me by Canyon. They are also RAs and the three of us were paired up as "brother/sister halls". This means that we are just supposed to do some activities together with our halls, I guess so that the guys and girls are able to meet and hang out in fun ways. We have also become sort of a support group for each other. We meet once a week with the main intent being to plan events. We also have a secondary agenda and that is to listen to each other and encourage. Sometimes there are things that happen as an RA that you feel that no one else will understand what you are feeling. But other RAs know. So it has been good to talk with them.

Then there's Nicole. She and I adopted each other at the beginning of the fall semester in 2004. She is on the Bodybuilder leadership team with me and she works in Res Life. So I get to work with her a lot. She roomed with my real sister (one of the good ones) our freshmen year, so she knows a lot about my family and through talks with her, I have been able to hear a lot about her family. We both come from way different backgrounds, but we still seem to be able to understand each other real well. Our families have gone through some pretty crazy stuff in the past couple of years and it has been good to know someone else has weird problems too.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the wonderful people in my life. But these are some of the friends who I have become close with over the past semester. They have kept me encouraged and out of trouble. I thought last semester was going to be scary. Instead it turned out to be great. God really knows how to come through. He brought people into my life that I wouldn't have necessarily picked out for myself. But he knew exactly what I needed, and then went above and beyond. If you don't worship the God I do, I truly am sorry. My whole life is a testimony of how good God can be to a wretched sinner. Every day I am so thankful for the gift of salvation he has given me.

No comments: