Are You Letting God Write Your Best Story?

I have so many best friends I haven’t met yet.

It was the Fourth of July, 2014. After an afternoon of raucous lawn games and shenanigans, I found myself floating around in a pool with a bunch of people who were only barely not strangers. This kind of situation is well known to anyone who’s lived through the frenzied wedding craze of the twenties and thirties—one day you’re flying into a new town with a carry-on bag and a carefully packed bridesmaid dress in tow, you spend a weekend with a bunch of rabble rousers with whom you become fast friends, and then, after a muted brunch on Sunday morning, you return to the airport to commence with your everyday life.

The steamy summer nights, sparkling champagne, loud laughter, and heady celebrations work together to create the most romantic friend dates, and you find the goodbyes to be the equivalent of the last day of summer camp. There are friend requests on Facebook, numbers are exchanged, and a few texts back and forth the following week. The din dies down quickly, though, and while your Instagram feed regularly features those new faces, nothing major changes. No reunion tours actualize. No group texts foster true community. It was just a great weekend.

I’m an expert at these weekends. I’ve celebrated through many of them over the last few summers, which is why that moment in the pool last July stands out. Something that had become routine, benign even, truly changed my life.

I have so many best friends I haven’t met yet.

While the thought wasn’t stunning for anything other than its simplicity, this particular weekend with strangers-turned-friends was enough to name that buzzing in my head. At that point, my life at home was beginning to feel stale and worn and a little like the pants that suddenly expose your ankles following a growth spurt in middle school. I was itching for a change, a next step, but felt grounded by loyalty and my love for those around me, as well as the deep desire to be near to do life with them.

And yet.

And yet there had to be something more. The world is too big, too full to stay in my little corner of it forever. So many more people exist than I could possibly ever know—surely some of them, somewhere, are a part of this story Jesus is writing in my life. I craved a change, an adventure, and that day in the pool made me realize I would not have to do it alone, no matter how far from my friends and family I wandered. A dream that had lain dormant suddenly shivered and stretched, and in my heart, I knew change was coming.

Of course, it’s rarely that simple or straightforward. My path twisted and dipped throughout the following months, full of slammed doors and open windows. Then, finally, it happened: God orchestrated a heist and cued me at the perfect moment.  And I leapt. I left home, took a new job, moved to a new city where I knew only three people.

I left holding the hope of a promise, the hope of best friends I didn’t yet know, and confidence in a God who will not be outdone, not even by Himself.

The Fourth of July, 2015. My boyfriend shows up at my house with breakfast, and we drink coffee with my new roommates. Strangers-turned-friends blow up my phone with texts about plans and fireworks and grilling. We head downtown to watch the show touted as the best in the country. We sword fight with light-up swords purchased from a street vendor and sip drinks with a British man we run into in a bar. I’m happier than I’ve been in I don’t know how long, yet the thought lingers…

There are still so many more people out there, so many best friends I haven’t met yet.

This isn’t about the number of contacts in your phone, of course. It’s not about feeding discontent or about devaluing the treasure right in front of you. It’s not about being reckless or foolish or running from circumstances.

But it is about recognizing that buzzing in your head and taking risks.

[Tweet “I believe God writes the best stories and He is not limited by the things that concern us. “]He is grand and wild and unpredictable at times, and those seemingly random moments spent floating around in a pool with those barely-not-strangers can mean something if you take them to Him and say, “Um, that struck a chord. Now what?”

So what if you did it? What if you took that risk? Made that decision? Said those words? Maybe it’s not a cross-country move. Maybe it’s a conversation or a job or a relationship or trying again where you’ve failed in the past. What if you stopped ignoring the buzzing and turned it up instead?

What if you went out and found those best friends instead of pining for them? How richer, simpler, holier could your story be just one year from today? Are you allowing God to write your best story?

Carly Crookston is a world traveler currently nesting in Nashville, Tennessee. A lover of words, people, and Jesus, she delights in pretty books for a living. A Joanna Gaines fangirl, Carly daydreams about her name in print, a home full of laughing people and good food, and a life of adventures with her future husband, Jesse.