Knit Together

I’m hanging on tight to this summer.

To this weekend and past weekends.

To the way I’m feeling in this exact moment – blissfully content.

I think the perfect word for this season of life I’m finding myself in is connection, and honestly, if I look back it’s certainly a common theme threaded through my past posts. The desire to pull the beauty and grace from the everyday; to slow down and enjoy what life is throwing at me rather than rushing from one thing to the next. But it’s also more than that, I’m not only craving deep connection with the world around me but with the people that I get to share it with. I don’t want to miss out on the richness of life.

Connection is vulnerable. It’s scary; it’s also exhilarating. The fear of being known and accepted is so very real. Building memories with new people is hard. I have girlfriends from college that know everything about me. They’ve seen me at my best – and my worst – but somehow they still decide to connect with me. At first I was afraid that if I shared too much with my new friends they wouldn’t want to hang out with me anymore, but that is so far from the truth. Life is messy and what good is it having friends that you can’t be real with?

I’ve only tasted the frosting on what it means to be connected, to be present, and to be vulnerable, but I’m coming back for more. In an attempt to run after connection, my friends and I have started our own Cooking Club. Once every 3 weeks someone in our group hosts a dinner where they prepare a meal and everyone else comes and receives. It’s time set aside to be present; to intentionally connect with others over good food and wine – obviously wine.

When thinking about our journey through life Shauna Niequist says it best – “It was not about to-do lists or scheduling or minutes and hours. This journey has been about love, about worth, about God, about what it means to know him and be loved by him in a way that grounds and reorders everything”. God has been telling me to slow down, and to connect – with him and with the people he loves. I’m fighting to be present and to allow the fabric of my life to be connected to that of those around me.

So, I’m hanging on tight to these moments of connection because they are too sweet to let go.