+it's all about comfortable when you move so much

I have been writing like a fiend this semester.
Though you'd have no idea of that by the appearence of this blog.
(Like how I have to defend myself? Sheesh.)

The current thoughts I've been dwelling upon is the hard time I'm having doing away with old habits and patterns I had gotten myself into unhealthfully. Mostly in respect to friendships I had during my college experience. When I started college and probably for a good majority of it, many of the friendships I made were like-minded, overachieving individuals who became, in a sense, just as much competitors as they were friends. I enjoyed being with them as I felt sharpened and constantly pushing myself farther than I should in hopes that all that striving, it would push me to blossom into something more magnificent than I could ever imagine.

Unfortunately, that is a very me-controlled, me-centered way to live life and do friendships. Somewhere I realized that instead of moving, I was drowning, and the friends that I used to challenge me kept going even when I stopped. Good for them, I always thought, and in flooded the guilt and the hurt and the feelings of inadequecies.

I realize that friendships have a lot to do with relaxing. "Let's just chill" as the girl I babysit daily tells me we need to do. But how do you switch gears? How do you cultivate friendships that do, in fact, just chill? No need for weighty conversation and intentionality every time, just let it flow naturally. I desire this in my relationship with Christ first and foremost - no guilt coming before Him, no need for life change through every conversation, no need to be challenged and stretched upon every meeting. That way of living just isn't sustainable and isn't helping me do anything but be exhausted.

That's where it starts, with my relationship with Christ. When that falters into a guilty-ridden, success-driven kind of relationship, so do my friendships. So my prayers and my thoughts have been focused on allowing myself to be molded into this type of person. Not out of regret or fear, but out of a desire to genuinely accept love from my Creator, and in doing so, genuinely give and accept love to His creation.

Oh the difficulties of dispelling old habits.