Finding community in college is hard. Even when you join clubs and do all the things that people tell you will lead to friendships, they are not guaranteed. This is something I learned through lots of tears and frustration, thinking something was wrong with me and that no one else could understand. It seemed as though everyone found their friends early freshman year and were not looking to have any more. This incorrect thinking led to lots of shame and a feeling of defeat in my ability to have quality friendships.

Don't get me wrong I have had many friends throughout college, but most turned out to be toxic which left me with many wounds and a hardened heart towards friendship.

"I can't deal with you."

"No one can be around her for long."

"You only care about yourself but that's good because that's all you have."

Enter senior year. after a traumatic summer living situation, three random roommates and a new combined Bible study. I had very low expectations that I would find community, though that was the word I hurriedly wrote on the notecard passed out at the end of the first Bible study for what we hoped to get out of this year together. Almost as if my heart knew what I desperately desired while my head was telling me to give up hope.

Not quite two months into the semester, at another Bible study (coincidence, I don't think so), in our study of Malachi, we got yet another notecard, but this time we were instructed to write five things we had stopped praying for. Friendship was at the top of my list, and when asked to share one thing we wrote down with nothing to lose I expressed my defeat in asking God for strong, encouraging friendships. I immediately prayed for friendships after this meeting. I am not even joking when I say that the prayer was answered in one day, and even continued to be answered throughout the week.

The day after study, we had a West Campus Women's event at a trampoline park. About 40 minutes before the event was to begin I decided to reach out in the GroupMe to see if anyone needed a ride or wanted to carpool. This led to me riding with some girls from my study even though it wasn't very convenient for them to pick me up. And wouldn't you know I ended up falling and hurting my ankle and was so thankful I had ignored the voice in my head telling me no one would want to carpool? I felt so cared for after my injury, and am astounded at how God used my clumsiness to show me how much He cares for me, and that He does want me to have friends.

In the next few days I was invited and included in ways that I have not been in a long time, and I am in awe that God would make this happen for me. I had heard several times that if you did not have good friends that meant you weren't a good friend and had decided that must be true of me. This mentality is not only wrong, but also led to me feeling undeserving of good friendships and a disconnect in my relationship with the Lord. I am thankful for the way He is teaching me that this is simply not true, and while each of the past, complicated friendships I have had were important for growth, and revealing how my heart unhealthily idolized friends' opinions of me, that does not mean I do not deserve great friendships, or that I am not a good friend.

If you are struggling to find friends, you are not alone, you are not a bad friend, and you are absolutely worthy of having kind, loving, and supportive friends in your life. Don't stop asking God for these friendships. While He does not need you to ask Him for things, He wants you to! And it will be all the sweeter when He graciously provides.

As it says in 1 John 5:14-15 "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him."