Happy "Month of Love," y'all

            Wow, it’s February already. The month of luuuuuurve. That’s what my brain (and I’m sure it’s not just me) jumps to at the mere mention of February: Valentine’s day and all it entails. Cuddles and cute red hearts, sickly-sweet selfies with significant others and shout outs to “best friends” and “baes” on facebook.

            Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hatin’ on the holiday. I love Valentine’s day. I think it’s wonderful that our society celebrates love. From shyly delivering cards to childhood crushes to watching my grandparents slow dancing to Frank Sinatra, I have great memories of Februarys past. I just think that there is far too much emphasis placed on romantic love.

            Romantic love is important and noble and adorable and necessary, but it is hardly fair to prioritize any and all romantic loves above other types of love. Consider, the “love” in a relationship between teenagers who probably won’t be able to stand each other in a year’s time versus the love shared in a relationship between mother and child, between roommates, teammates or longtime friends.

            This week, I’ve had some time and reason to ponder on platonic love—particularly the love between my roommates.

            To make a Harry Potter reference (because that's how I role), “there are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them” (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, 1997). 

             Not to say that we’ve faced fictional creatures of terror together, but we’ve spent over four months together facing adult, college-student life together. This is including but not limited to responsibilities, boys, breakups, breakdowns, homework, house cleaning and house parties. If that isn’t the real life equivalent of a twelve-foot troll, I don’t know what is.

            We’ve prayed together, laughed together, snuggled and napped together, shared food and funny stories, and we’ve seen each other through every mood in the spectrum. And this weekend, when one of my roommates walked into our apartment several hours later than expected, after having gone through a serious, life threatening accident and emerged unscathed, we held back tears together as we clung to each other. We knelt together and thanked God for her safety. And I realized just how dear each of these women has become to me, how devastated I would be to lose any of them. God puts people in our lives for a reason, and the ladies of apartment 113, my friends, have made my life better by their being in it, and that seems reason enough for me.