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.

Blessed

I just want to let you guys know, I have felt the Lord's hand so strongly in my life since I started school. I've had several experiences where I felt He was guiding me. The third day of school, I was convinced, 100%, no doubts, that my second class was at 3:00. I went to the library, determined to study til 2:45. About 1:45, I just thought that, even though I *knew* it was at 3:00, I should just look over my schedule again. It turned out that it was at 2:00. I have a different class on another day that's at 3:15, and somehow I'd mixed the two classes together. I got to my class just in time.

That class, incidentally, was Women's Choir. If I hadn't shown up that day to do call-backs, I would not have been accepted into the Choir, which would have left me one credit short of the full-time student credit minimum. It also would have been very disappointing, because I love singing, and so far Choir has been a lot of fun. Well, besides the scary moment approaching my director to tell her I'd have to miss a concert for Chris' wedding. But the director was so chill about it, my nerves were completely misplaced.

Other times, I have felt that I shouldn't study something at a certain time and instead take care of non-educational things. I paid for my student insurance in one of those times. I hadn't realized I needed to get it. That was the only time that day I could go before they closed. If I'd paid it a day later, it would have been late and cost more.

Things like this just make me feel so warm and fuzzy inside when I think about them. I mean, I'm hours away from all my family, so it is so comforting to me to know that my Heavenly Father is taking extra special care of me while I'm away from them.