new leaf.

"if you judge people, you have no time to love them" - mother teresa

   when i'm at work, i'm friendly of course, but sometimes its not much more than the "work friendly" that i'm being paid to do. when i'm at church, i usually just stick to my close friends so we can take turns drawing pictures of gangsters to get us through the 3 hours. and when i'm with the girls, i'm just so happy to be with them, i become all encompassed by them. 

   i don't often realize this, but a few things have proven it to me lately. to start with, jessica & tehya are our new best friends. they are at our house everyday (jessica has her bedding, her mac, and her zelda/ N 64 there at all times-her 3 most prized possessions, i'm sure) we have group naps together, we do each others makeup, share clothes, just everything. last night, being the weird girls that we are, jess and i were pretending to "be" one another. so between her picking up her phone for "derek" and exclaiming "we shouldn't date, we're not boyfriend & girlfriend, okay? k i love you!" and me getting all up in her face, pouting from boredom, or intensely "playing" zelda we realized HOW quickly we'd become such good friends. 3 months before, we hardly even knew who one another were. 

   i asked her what her first impressions of me were. she said she was intimidated because i was more involved with my close friends than anyone else. that also made me think about work. when i go out of my way to be nice, people treat me so much differently. they are full of compliments, stories and smiles. 

   it also reminded me of conversation sierra and i had on the way home from the grocery store the other day, where we established that you really don't know a person until you go out of your way and actually try. this was pertaining to all our friends down here, from matt, who used to drop the F bomb every other word, but has now changed so much that he is in the MTC starting this very day. jess & tehy, who we figured would just stay at the formal acquaintance level, or even me, who everyone thought was gonna be reeeally reserved and very straight laced. but i surprised them all and i'm so happy that the people in my life have taken time out of theirs to actually learn that.

   my goal from here on out is to do that for others. i always try to refrain from judgement, and something that helps the most is thinking that somewhere in this world, this person has a mother, father, best friend, boyfriend and sibling that love them more than life. and if i'm too stuck in my ways to figure out why they are loved, then its MY fault, and i don't deserve that friendship in the first place.  i'll tell you what, its NOT easy.  but i'm trying. and i want to come off as kind and friendly, not intimidating at allll. you just never know how much your smile can lift someone else, how much one small conversation can help them in a time of need. 

PS. so ironic that i just wrote all this, because right as i finished that last sentence, a cute older woman with hair in pigtails on top of her head and little girl bangs walked in. she was loud, crazy and maybe a little bit off, but the sweeetest and funniest little lady i've ever seen come in here. she told me how badly she wanted my watch, how she just quite smoking,  how she's gained 40 pounds, about a new gym down here that i should go to, and how she's been an emotional wreck lately. ALL of that within 10 minutes. she just lit up my day.  not my usual kind of friend, but a friend none the less. some people just surprise you :)

-little