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In Novem­ber, I spent some time in Cal­i­for­nia. It was mainly for my grandmother’s funeral, but I was blessed to be able to spend time with fam­ily and cre­ate won­der­ful mem­o­ries. My most favorite was spend­ing time with my brother and sister-in-law on the Morro Bay beach tak­ing pic­tures. I was able to cap­ture some amaz­ing scenes: surfers, turf war with birds, shells, etc. With all the beauty sur­round­ing this mid-west girl, what stood out to me the most was when my sister-in-law intro­duced me to sea glass.

It’s my under­stand­ing that there is glass that the ocean waves have rolled over and over on sand and cor­ral until it’s per­fectly smooth. Find­ing round one’s was hard, but when you did find them, they were like flaw­less mar­bles. The rocks rolled between the waves and sand were also per­fectly smooth. It’s an inspir­ing result from fric­tion time and time again.

This got me thinking…

I don’t mind con­fronta­tion but I do not like fric­tion. It’s the con­stant rub­bing the wrong way. We all know peo­ple like that and for some rea­son they like to con­gre­gate online too…HA! But if rea­son­able con­ver­sa­tions and “friendly fire” pro­duce learn­ing results, then maybe we shouldn’t shy away from it all the time.

Now, I’m not talk­ing about the sad saps that only pro­duce neg­a­tive vibes. You know how I feel about them. But if we embrace a lit­tle fric­tion along the way, don’t we just bet­ter our­selves and cre­ate a more smooth, rounded per­son? Maybe the next time a friend gen­tly chal­lenges your motives or your thoughts, you could lis­ten and let the fric­tion buffer out the impu­ri­ties and cre­ate some­thing so much more beautiful.

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Be sure to check out the other blog­gers of 31 Days of Min­istry Online:

Karin — 31 Days of Inten­tional Par­ent­ing