On the Shattered Blog—Encouragement Skill Level: Master

I haven’t written much for my blog recently, but it’s not because I haven’t been writing. This week, I wrote a story for Shattered about how my friend Andrea is an encouragement MASTER with just some ice cream and a scarf. Start reading here and then pop over to Shattered for the rest of the article! 

How A Scarf Can Make You A Master Encourager

I used to think I was a pretty encouraging person. I’d write notes to friends and use humor (however cheesy it may be) to make them laugh on a bad day. Yep, I thought I was good.

Then I met Andrea, and my Encourager IQ dropped about a thousand points. Not that I’m having a woe-is-me-I-fail-at-encouraging pity party. But I just realized what it really meant to be a real friend, a Proverbs 17:17 and 27:17 kind of friend.

My Life was Average 

I know that many people view their twenties as that decade when everything is awesome: lots of friends, lots of—I’ll go with “activities”— lots of carefree, spontaneous fun, without children or pesky spouses to get in the way.

That’s not quite how it has been for me, though. And while I don’t agree with what our culture values for the twenties, in my more candid moments, sometimes I wish I did. In the five years I’ve claimed the title of “twenty-something,” it has been less of a party and more of a wasteland in the social life department. That sounds harsh, like I don’t know anybody and have whittled away my existence in my parents’ basement, but that’s really not true (okay, the parents’ basement thing is true, but not the whittling part).

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