This post is on this month’s theme of BLOOM and on one of the quotes that inspired it:

I know I’ve mentioned in a few posts that I have been trying to build a community closer to home.  I wanted to write a post on one of the beautiful communities I already have somewhere else. But it kind of spiraled out from there… This week my family and I went to visit some dear college friends in California. What an incredible time of joy and renewal.

There’s a Bible verse that was really popular at Pepperdine- where I went to undergraduate school at Seaver College. It seemed that every other Bible study or recruitment person or spiritual life advisor I talked to this verse came up. “As Iron sharpens iron so one person sharpens another” Or, to put it in different terms than the Psalms do… it’s the pretty common belief that you tend become like the people you spend the most time with, so choose carefully.

Well, looking at the group of people I spent time with this week and the way they made me feel when I was with them… I hit the jackpot when it comes to friends. I chose wisely and was blessed beyond any reasonable hope or expectation. These are some of the people who bring beauty to my life and who make the world brighter. Distance and time does not dull our friendship, it just makes our time together more precious.

My friends are diverse and beautiful. We don’t all have the same career path, we aren’t necessarily in the same family situations or life stages, but we are huge cheerleaders for each other. (Not to beat a dead horse, but they feel like the embodiment of my favorite Amy Poehler phrase aka my current life mantra of “Good for you, not for me” only add on “and I will cheer the heck out of your decision because I love you! and I know you’re cheering on me too!”) These are the people that will walk with you two miles even if you only asked them to go one, who spread a trail of glitter and joy wherever they go, who make me want to be better, and who feel like their own kind of family.

There seems to be a big trend right now with open letters to people on blogs. Many, MANY of them are to children when they are older or to assumed future spouses of those children, but I’d like to focus on a different kind of love. So,

Dear future friends of my son (and any other children that may or may not come along…) I am already praying for you and thanking God for the ways you will come into my child’s life and enrich their time and experiences. Above all, I hope you will be kind. I hope your friendships are based on something deeper than situational dissatisfaction or the need to bring others down. The entertainment industry likes to depict high school friendships in particular with an eye towards cattiness and frenemies. I hope for more for your friendship. So much more. I hope your friendship will grow and bloom until you can relate to this C.S. Lewis quote:
I hope you sharpen each other and encourage each other in faith, trust, honesty, and perseverance.
I wish you many nights of staying up later than you thought you could because you don’t want to stop laughing and talking. I wish you laughter until your face hurts, until you have a stitch in  your side and need to catch your breath. I wish you inside jokes and celebrations of things that other people would find strange and I wish you moments where silence is enough and no words are needed to convey what you both already know. I hope you document some of your great moments together so you can show your children and their friends some day. I hope you’ll humor me when I try to show you and my child goofy pictures of me and my friends.
I hope you will be open to finding more friends as time goes on, and realize that friendship need not be jealous. The more the merrier: more shoulders to bear life’s burdens together, more hands to clap and celebrate together.

I am already praying for you. Odds are you could know my child for many more years than their future spouse, odds are you could prepare them for their spouse. I know my friends helped me get over many of my selfish hangups or my fears and reminded me that accepting love is as important as giving love sometimes. I hope you receive this gift of friendship in return as well. I am going to work hard to model friendship and teach my child how to be a friend. I can’t wait to start meeting you all and see the amazing ways your friendships bloom.

OK, maybe… that got a little sappy. But I’m feeling super grateful and nostalgic and blown away by friendships from all different parts of my life. I’m feeling extra grateful that so many friends got to meet my son for the first time or that they got to know him better.

So, since I’m catching up on travel time this week- I’m really trying hard to finish the post on this week’s baking project by tomorrow! Here’s a sneak peek:

LOST themed baked goods! Don’t worry, even if you never watched the show, you will love the recipe. And if you did watch the show, rest assured that it is constant, variable, and DHARMA approved!