while I hugged a friend good-bye the other day... actually two separate friends going two separate ways in their lives, compared to mine. I realized that life most certainly moves on. Friends move away, go in different directions, get married, have children, buy property, get new jobs. There is such a strange sense that seasons come and seasons go in the year... but I find also in life. I love how one of my close friends calls the times of her life "seasons" That they are almost like chapters of a book that describe every specific part of where she is, and where she goes. I adore that phrase and try to use it as my own.
In my own life I have experienced many different seasons, some bad, some good, some not-so-good, some not-so-bad. All having their own friends, their own style of myself, their own meaning and specific direction to bring me to the next chapter. And although some things that have happened in those seasons have been hard to admit where honest mistakes were made in an honest naive way most times, I don't trade anything in for something else. Because if I had, then the season I'm living at this moment would not be the way it is.
Even the seasons that are meshed with others, I bring everything... every experience, heartache, pain, joy, praise into the next chapter of my life. Working through everything to somehow, in some way be the person and continue to walk in the direction that God has laid out for me. Wherever that is, whoever I am made to be.
I love the people that have walked with me through every aspect of my life. And those that may say that I never loved or cared for them. Please recognize your mistake. That part of who I was, or the part of me that was begging to be something more, loved you with what I had at that moment in time. And if you are my precious friend today, still living with me, going through the stages of my life with me, and those of your own, please understand as well that we may not be together forever. And thats okay! For the love of friends, never truly fades away.
I've begun to understand this and have found peace, I've mourned over the idea that the people I love with so much of my heart may not be with me tomorrow, or the year next. Not because of death, but because of life. Because direction is fickle, things happen, lives move on... and thats okay.
I am thankful for who I am... I am thankful especially for the God I serve, but I am as well thankful for those who have been such great friends. Even those that have been acquaintances, or those that have hurt me in some way or other, or who I may have hurt as well.
Growth, life, moving on... it hurts... but its necessary. And I am thankful for that too!

Blessings on all!