My dime store pearls

I had dinner tonight with an old friend. And by old, I mean one whom I have been friends with for awhile. We are, in fact, only like a year apart in age. Nonetheless, we caught up. Honestly, we had been trying to have dinner/beer date/ chat time for the ENTIRE summer and 3 days before Labor Day landed a dinner date.

It was lovely. Especially if you count the super awkward waiter who incessantly wanted to fill up our glasses of water even though we were totally content chewing on pellet ice (like they have at Sonic). He even asked her where she worked... 3 times, annnnd ignored me. Haha.

However, I digress.

(But don't you just love friends who you can just pick back up with after a long time? It seems like no time has passed at all. Love it!)

We caught each other up on church, work, love lives (or lack thereof), and various weddings, births and other exciting events that had happened in the recent past. Then we began talking about the weather. Thankfully, fall has descended upon Central North Carolina and brought a much needed reprieve from the 90+ degree weather.

She made the statement, "I really like season changes." This was a double entendre as to the weather change as well as all the seasonal changes we are facing in some of our friendships.

I stopped her and said, "I, however, am not at that point. I don't deal well with change. And I'd rather stop having so many seasons in my life. I feel like they are always so short."

With great wisdom, she shared with me her point of view, saying, "the good thing about seasons with friends is that they can always come back around. Just because you aren't friends now, or things look different, doesn't mean you will never be friends again. And with the weather, I have found that I like the beginning of all the new seasons. It's refreshing to get cool after a long summer, and then warm after a long winter. I like all seasons!"

In all honesty, I can't say I'm there yet, but I did have the same refreshing thought this morning when I was walking the dog about how glad I was that it was getting cooler. I guess I never really applied that to all the other aspects of my life. At the end of a hot summer, all we really want is a cool fall.

I just finished reading the book, Ocean Star, by Christina DiMari. It's about her journey and the places she had to go to in order to reach the place God wanted her to be, so she could fulfill His ultimate destiny for her. In the book, she surrenders a very precious set of dime store pearls that her (now deceased) father had given to her. She "surrendered" them to God. Puts them away. Trusts. After a few years, God brings her someone who gives her a set of real pearls that touch her heart deeply. She even had to borrow a pair of real pearls to wear on her wedding day. Yet, on her 15th anniversary, she wore real ones :)

I think it's the same way in life. We hold on so tight to what we have thinking God doesn't know best. We pretend that dime store pearls are precious when, in turn, God wants to fulfill our heart's desire to have the real thing. God always wants me to get closer to Him, but I hold onto the things I have, and it holds me back from Him. We hold onto the fake, and because of that, we are sacrificing the real.

There are things I'm holding onto right now because I'm tired of having to let go. But I think I'm beginning to understand that a change in seasons means there is new life around the corner. There has to be death before there can be life. There has to be closure before something new can be opened. There has to be an end to the old before a new beginning.


So, God, You can have my dime store pearls. I want a strand of real ones.