The Friendship Bracelet

 Today I have been really missing my youth group and my girls back home. In one of my classes, I glanced down at the woven bracelet that one of my girls made for me before I left for school this year. It has five different colors, one color for each of the girls whom I am really close to. She made it so I could look down at my wrist and know that five girls were thinking about me, five girls loved me and missed me greatly. When Meg first tied it to my wrist, the colors were vibrant, the braid was tight, the ends were crisp, nothing could possibly break this bracelet unless it were cut by scissors. Each of these characteristics were symbolic of the friendship I had with each of these amazing girls. We had survived one year of me being in college and them being in high school and came out stronger than we had been before: nothing could break us. Together, God gave us the strength to break through any obstacle, we were each shinning bright with HIS love and was reading to conquer our next years of school.

Today I looked down at this bracelet and it had morphed. The colors are now faded from being always present on my hand. One of the braids has completely unfrazzled. Instead of being straight, the sides are curved up and under in different spots. The material is not nearly as tight anymore, instead it is easily stretched.This really brought me down.

Then I got to thinking...these girls are still an important part in my life; but both sides of this bracelet are growing. They are in high school now, they are finding out who they are, they are making their own friends and growing. Yet they know that I am still going to be there, not just a bracelet around their wrist, I am marked in their lives.

They aren't the only ones growing. This year in itself, I have made some new impacting friendships. Some of the old ones, that I was sure were going to last forever have faded and have left some new really challenging and exciting ones in their place. As I sit here, putting messages on my girls' walls on facebook, I am getting ready to go to dinner with a new friend that I never would have met had I allowed this bracelet to be my life. I am realizing that change is essential to growth. Growth does not mean leaving everyone behind, but being able to embrace more. Growth means reminiscing about the old and tattered friendship bracelet while I tie a new one next to it.

<3 D