Lately I've learned something about relationships: you have to appreciate the small things. While I've always had a knack for mastering this in life, in relationships I tend to strive for "over perfection." True that spontaneity and originality are essential spices in life, but, as with any spice, a dash is all that's needed in the recipe.

When I slow down and breathe life in I find that the things which strike me as most beautiful are oftentimes the everyday. In all my relationships I am beginning to recognize a pattern in the seemingly mundane, and it's this: it's not so mundane. Some of my fondest memories are going to the grocery store with a friend and just being goofy, or cleaning up the room with a roommate and having a contest to see who can find the best junk on the floor to make a new invention (hey, I never said mundane had to be dry). Even things as simple as studying or running errands can in time develop a unique friendship. Maybe, I'm learning, it's when you're with people in their everyday, and in your everyday, that you can learn to truly appreciate both their simplicity and their intricacies -- creating a genuine intimacy.

I am lying here somewhat flatly on my bed this hot summer evening waiting for a breeze. But it will not come. Instead, an unusually humid desert heat has been boiling all of me from what even feels as the insides of my toes making me edgier than normal, but mostly, just uncomfortable. Sometimes, but not often enough, and never very powerfully, a sickly wave of air will teasingly graze past me. Yet in this heat "sometimes" is never enough. I have hope, and because of past experiences know that this air will eventually cool and engulf the room (or somewhat fill it), but it's hard to be patient when I have this much discomfort.

This is how I see parts of life like. This is reality. Sometimes we are uncomfortable -- dreadfully so. Everyone around is getting jobs or boyfriends, maybe it's the best grades in the class or their figure looks nicer. We may struggle with one given thing until we feel like all the air is out of us, until we can't imagine a time after that particular struggle; sometimes this battle happens for so long, we almost become numb.

Have hope! Please, if you have nothing, have hope. And if anyone tries to drain you of your hope, don't let them. Stay strong, because you are strong. God will see you through, and when he does it will not only be a testimony of his sovereignty and grace, but a testimony of Christ in you. My prayer for you -- whoever reads this and needs encouragement, is not to fall through the cracks of discouragement, but hold your chin up high. God will not fail you.