It’s 12:15 a.m. and I just finished building a bookcase for the living room in my apartment.

I mentioned it early today, but I really do find joy in using tools. It’s something about knowing how to use the weight of each tool most efficiently, as well as the engrained care that goes along with putting sweat behind each swing of the hammer and turn of the screw driver.

Some day I hope to be as proficient in carpentry as my father and Uncle Steve.  I have grown to truly admire the art.

I’m sitting in my new apartment, that has been nearly completely furnished as of this weekend, and I am overwhelmed with how God continued to bless me and comfort me through the stressful process.

Not only did I get almost an entire apartment furnished (and nicely I might add!) via secondhand stores/Craigslist, but I was also blessed with the comforting reminder that I have some very special, generous people in my life willing to sacrifice time, energy and vehicles to help me throughout the whole process.

While I still struggle with adjusting to having very few people I know around this summer and working a lot and doing summer school, these past couple weeks have shown me just how blessed I am to have a couple of wonderful women in my life.

I’ve always been one to try and invest in every person I meet and tend to try and make friends every where I go. This is great, but I am learning the incredible value of having a couple of close female friends that I can have honest, raw dialogue with. Women that I can talk about “life, God, death and our families” (Dismantel Repair-Anberlin, came to mind right away).

When a friend will cook dinner with you and sit on your carpet to watch a movie, because you have no furniture, you know you have a genuine friend.

When a friend will run across traffic to pick up a pillow that flew off the couch she used her truck to move for you (haha…), you know you have a genuine friend.

Take a moment to think of the friends in your life that provide you with unmeasurable love and honesty. Take another moment to tell that person how much they mean to you.

Read this example of true friendship, found in the story of Ruth and Naomi.

Ruth 1:16-17 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”