Becoming Sisters

A ship cannot sail on the choppy sea without first being built in a safe harbor.  It cannot find shape unless it has something to model itself after.  It cannot grow and improve unless others are allowed to come on board and supports are set in place around it.

Last weekend, my dream finally starting taking shape and becoming a reality.  Let me explain:  

My youth group growing up played one of the most instrumental roles in my choice to follow Christ personally.  Although I had been raised and formed in a strong Catholic family, it wasn’t until I had the fellowship and support of other kids my age that I confidently made a personal decision to accept my faith as my own.  For me, the witness of girls slightly older than me making decisions to follow Christ and strive towards holiness had a powerful impact on me.  They proved to me that this faith that I had been raised with was not just something for my parents, but something for me too.

In the last months, it seems to me that the youth of the Jerusalem community are facing the same decision that I faced a few years ago.  Their parents have given them a strong foundation on which to build their faith, yet many of the youth have not yet made the decision to follow Christ themselves.  They are on the brink of making that decision, but it is an infinitely more difficult decision because they don’t have the support and encouragement of those their same age.

My dream has been to help create a support group for the girls that unites them and provides them with opportunities to build strong relationships with one another. 

This last weekend, this dream finally started becoming a reality.  I took the girls ice skating, then we came back to my house, made homemade pizza, watched a movie, and had a slumber party.  From an outsider’s perspective, we were an odd group made up of five 12-18 year-old girls who spoke three different languages natively and couldn’t tell you 10 facts bout each other, yet were laughing and sharing the moments like sisters.  At one point in the evening, I stepped back and took in the scene around me.  As I watched two of the girls teaching the rest of us a dance they had made up and listened to the laughter accompanying the booming music, I realized that that was exactly what we were doing: building sisterhood.  Though on our own this would have been an almost impossible task, the Lord is a work in this group of girls.  Sharing laughter and creating memories together, they are forming bonds that will be able to support them later on, relationships that will withstand trials and point them to Christ.  Though I am only a passerby, it is a privilege to share in the unique beauty of this budding sisterhood.