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~ christine bailey

girl in the middle

Monthly Archives: February 2016

“With A Little Help From My Friends”

19 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by cibailey44 in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

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This week’s guest blog from Ryan Sinni is all about treating friends right. Read his tips and put them into action—send a friend a note and say “thanks for being there.” Yep, it’s that simple.

Ryan writes:  If you’re at all like me, you take most of your friendships for granted and rarely tell your friends how much you appreciate them. Although some of my neglect of friendship probably comes from simple lack of thoughtfulness, I think it also demonstrates a broader imbalance in contemporary American culture. We have a day to celebrate our lovers (Valentine’s Day) and days to celebrate our families (Mother’s Day and Father’s Day), but who celebrates Friendship Day? In his classic work,“The Four Loves,” C.S. Lewis argues that love can be separated into four main categories: unconditional love, romantic love, affectionate love, and friendship love. American culture has made romantic love ultimate at the expense of the others.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We need to remind our friends how much we appreciate them. One way to do this is to write notes. writing-1170138__180.jpgI don’t know about you, but I don’t go to my mailbox hoping I won’t discover an encouraging note from a friend. If my friends appreciate cards so much, why don’t I write them more often? Perhaps some folks fear expressing their feelings towards their friends, even if those feelings are mediated by a piece of paper. I suppose most of my reluctance to write notes comes from a lack of thoughtfulness. I don’t think enough about the difficult week my friend might be having and the encouragement a handwritten note could provide.

Another way to encourage our friends is to compliment them—and I have one piece of advice: be specific. I often find that I will offer a general compliment and then grasp after ways to “prove” it, as if my friend thought my praise insincere. A great way is to start by thinking of a time when your friend did something pretty amazing and then praise him/her for it.“I really appreciate how you … that meant so much to me.”

As we write notes and give compliments to show our friends how much we appreciate them, we become more considerate people. By remembering stories and conveying specifics, we grow increasingly attentive to the gift our friendships really are. We don’t have to buy into the lie that friendships don’t matter. They do. Let’s treat our friends like we believe that.

Guest Blog: A College Student Asks…

12 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by cibailey44 in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Can we ever truly return home? Thanks for visiting my blog today where college student Ali Renckens reflects on what it means to come home.

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They say “home is where the heart is,” but what does that really mean? I divide most of my time between college and where I grew up, which is around 900 miles away from where I go to school. When I’m at school, I miss my family—usually calling them a couple times a week and texting constantly. Then again, homecoming isn’t like a parade across the football field wearing a sparkly crown and holding a bouquet of red roses; it’s more like precariously walking a tightrope, attempting to balance the freedom I have at school with that fact that I’m back in the room I’ve had since I was eight. And no matter where I am, I spend a lot of time planning where to go next. For instance, right now, I’m considering summer internships in three different states.

Each one of these places has my heart somehow; I love my family, I love my friends, I love school, and I love my work. It would be so simple if I could just click my heels and magically be transported to one place where everyone and everything I care about exists in perfect harmony. Instead, I’m sprinting down yellow brick roads, hoping they’ll carry me to my dreams.

Saying that I don’t know where home is sounds heartbreakingly desolate. But I don’t think it is. It’s only sad if there’s nowhere to go or no one to be with. There’s something wonderful – scary and beautiful and bewildering – about facing a world full of open doors, hearts willing to welcome you in, and suitcases ready to travel to every corner of the globe.

Maybe that’s the idea. Maybe home doesn’t have to be one, single place. Maybe a key aspect of maturity is the conscious decision to find joy in any situation, love for our new neighbors, and beauty in our foreign surroundings, so that wherever we are, we can sincerely and confidently say, “There’s no place like home.”

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