When you don't have to try.

Saturday finals.  Blah.  Not cool of the registrar.  But oh well, at least mine was at noon instead of 8 am, and it was Municipal Government so it was easy.  And I just looked and I got an A on it which means I got an A in the class, so yay for that.  I also got an A in Human Diversity.  This may be the first semester where I get straight As...only one class I'm not confident about, so we'll see.

Anyway, after that, I went to eat lunch and then spent a very long time on the phone with Caitie.  Like, an hour and 46 minutes long, and it was just so much fun.  We laughed, she gushed about Bruno, I gushed about a boy who shall remain nameless, and basically just became even closer than we were before.  When I looked at my phone towards the end of the conversation and realized how much time had passed, we both agreed that it didn't feel nearly that long.  It was just all around a great conversation with a girl that I adore.

I was sitting here trying to think about what to blog about tonight, and my mind kept going back to that part of the conversation when Caitie said how easy it is for us to talk to each other.  And I realize that I have so many people in my life now that are the exact same way.  Her, the band, Kyla, Ryann, Matt, Alex (I could go on), I don't have to try to have a friendship with any of them.  Things just are the way they are.  All of these friendships are ones that just clicked right from the start.  I felt free enough to be myself and was accepted as I am.  These people love me for who I am, I don't feel obligated to try and impress them.

These are real friends.  I've finally been given the chance to experience real love from people who hold no expectation of me other than that I love them, an expectation I gladly meet.  They listen to me, they respect me, and probably the biggest deal of all to me, they forgive me.  When I was in grade school, the "friends' I had surrounded myself with were the kind of people that left as soon as I screwed up and seemed to take pleasure in telling me it was all my fault.  I am now SO incredibly blessed to surround myself with people who have seen me at some of my worst moments and choose to love me, anyway.

All of this, all of them, it brings me back to my being a child of God and walking with Jesus.  These kids show me Christ every time they stick by me.  And just like I don't have to try to be friends with any of them because they know how much I love them, I don't have to try to be a daughter of the King, I just am because I love Him.  I don't know about you, but for someone as Type A, perfectionist, control freak I am, that's both a huge struggle for me to accept and SUCH a relief.  It's a relief because it reminds me that my salvation isn't going anywhere, but it's also a huge struggle for me because I still have a hard time believing that it's true.  Several of these friends know that sometimes I look at them or think about them and part of me just can't believe they're real, that I really have people that are this loyal and loving to me.  When it comes to God, take that feeling and multiply it about a hundred fold.  God loves me so much that He let His son die for me, and then He pulled me out of an extremely deep, dark valley where I hated Him and cursed Him and carried me to the top of the mountain.

Every day I try harder than the day before to stop questioning things so much, to stop overthinking things to the point that I feel crazy.  It's definitely something I'm still working on, and I probably will be for a while.  But I think that when I am finally able to just accept things as they are and appreciate them instead of wondering why they're here and when they're going to leave, the peace I feel in so many other aspects of my life is only going to get bigger and grow deeper.

In the meantime, I am beyond grateful that I have so much love in my life, both from people I can touch and the God that I cannot, that isn't dependent on whether or not I'm a bit of a loon. :)