Daily writing prompt

Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?

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This past week and a half has been quite great, relationship-wise. On Sunday the fourth (of January) I was at church by myself (my parents and brothers stayed home because they had friends visiting) and this young woman came and sat next to me, introducing herself. She invited me to the youth group, telling me she was one of the youth leaders there and we exchanged numbers. That Wednesday, I drove to the church and went to the youth group and y’all—when I say I had a day full of emotions and anxiety about this, I mean I had a day FULL of ALL the emotions and ALL the anxiety about this.

Well that’s not good, you say. You should be excited, Willow!

Cue all the emotions—I was so excited to finally (maybe) get plugged into a youth group and make some real, good, Christian friends. But I was so nervous because I seriously hadn’t been to youth group in six months, not since we had moved from Washington.

I cried about it, I freaked out about it, I yapped about it to my besties.

And then I actually went and BAM! This girl introduces herself to me and suddenly we’re inside this building with lots of loud sounds, a lot of people, and I already have a lot of anxiety—and I rarely get overstimulated by sensory stuff, but all my levels were high that night.

But I was introduced to several of the senior girls—because they have a few junior girls who are super inconsistent with coming—and the senior and junior girls’ small group leaders.

After that night, I really felt like I had bonded with the girls and leaders—people, who, an hour ago, were complete strangers. It’s strange what God will do.

Fast forward to last night when I went to my second youth group at this church. The nerves kinda hit me again but I saw what happened last time, so I said, “What the heck, I have to do this.”

It was even better, y’all. The same girl who introduced herself to me the first night came up as I walked in, with two middle school-aged girls (who I’m apparently now friends with). Aaaaand they proceeded to introduce me to half the youth group, leaders and kids, guys and girls, people she knew and even didn’t know. (Seriously, I’m not kidding when I say that.)

I left the night having met many people, made a couple friend prospects, and with an invitation to come back the next morning (aka today) at six am for day who-knows-what of the church’s 21 Days of Prayer that is going on in the month of January.

And actually, that reminds me: I was supposed to provide an update on Tuesday I think (or maybe it was Thursday—these T-days get me confused) from the prompt from my Don’t Let Anyone Look Down On Your Youth post.

So—I texted my small group in Washington, asking them if they wanted to do a small group hangout call and we could share our highs and lows of the week.

Now, in all honesty, I totally forgot about this prompt—that’s what I get for not writing it down—but then I realized two things:

1. Although I didn’t invite someone to youth group (because when I wrote the Youth post, I hadn’t been to the youth group yet), I did go to a youth group! And honestly, I really think that should count.
2. I invited my close friends to do a check-in-type of call. And while we might get sidetracked, yes, we will also get to see each other all together—something we (at least not with me) haven’t done in a long time!

So I’d say that this prompt has been mildly accomplished.

And you might be wondering: how does the title relate to the content of this post? Well, these things all happened (or are going to happen) because of something that began in a small moment. An invitation is small, sometimes even ‘meaningless.’

WRONG. An invitation is a big thing—and you seriously have no idea where that invitation could take you. So do those small things in the small moments, because they are going to have a big impact!

All in all, this week has been pretty good in reference to my friendships! One of my besties asked if I wanted to do a movie date night (because why not do that with your best friend?!) on a call and also do a book club! So I’m really excited.