the simple things...

"the simple things in life mean the most."

i really do believe that's true. i'm trying to simplify my life. that's difficult for someone like me. i'm a pretty complex person. i'm completely opinionated, but when it comes to what movie to watch or where we should eat lunch, i genuinely don't care. i'm totally stubborn and difficult (my parents have told me this from day one, lovingly, of course), but i can be so "go with the flow." i believe in brutal honesty, but usually start to cry after i've been brutally honest with someone. i'm probably one of the most sarcastic people you'll ever meet, but i can get my feelings hurt pretty easily. i'm highly unorganized and an accident waiting to happen, but i love when my desk and my apartment are super neat and everything is in place. the point of this rambling is not that i'm weird (although i admit that freely), but that simplicity is something that i relish, that i even strive for, but that is so difficult for me to obtain.

one way i'm trying to really simplify my life is to focus. right now i'm really concentrating on friendships. next to family, our friends are the most important things in our lives. we need good friends. for a long time i thought that i should only have really solid, Christian friends. now i'm beginning to think differently. obviously, i believe it's important that some of my closest friends be believers who encourage me and hold me accountable, but now i'm realizing how important my friends who are not Christians are to me. i need to invest in friendships - not just with Christian friends who think just like me. with people. jesus loved people. all kinds of people. he invested (invests) in their lives. am i doing that? i'm trying to. i want to be a good friend. i want to go to soccer games and funerals and lunch dates and watch movies and have good talks and be the person somebody calls at 3 am because they can't sleep and pick up from the airport and give you money if you need it and cook you dinner. and i just switched pronouns so many times just then and that's annoying. i'm sorry. anyway. i want to be a friend who loves. who genuinely loves and invests. if i'm not doing that, then how many real friendships do i have?? how many lives is jesus touching through me if i'm not truly investing in people's lives?? am i going out of my way - like jesus did - to be a friend?? that's the thing that challenges me most. sure, i can stick a sweet note in the mail, or shoot you a kind email, but am i going out of my way - doing something that might not be easy for me or comfortable for me or beneficial to me - to show others christ's love by being a good friend?

that's what i want to do.

"a friend loves at all times."
- proverbs 17:17

also, and this is completely unrelated, but read psalm 20 and 21. good stuff.