{"id":5050,"date":"2014-10-12T21:01:27","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T03:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=5050"},"modified":"2014-10-12T21:02:20","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T03:02:20","slug":"the-friends-we-choose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/the-friends-we-choose\/","title":{"rendered":"The Friends We Choose"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you find yourself racing through life, slow down long enough to take along some good friends.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0 – L. Tom Perry<\/p>\n

This last week I was reminded of how blessed I am to have amazing friends in my life.\u00a0 My husband and I were able to spend last week with a group of 15 friends down at Lake Powell.\u00a0 Spending a week at Lake Powell with someone is one of the best ways to form deep friendships with people.\u00a0 You are totally unplugged from the world, with no cell coverage and no email coverage.\u00a0 You spend all day every day with the group doing watersports, playing games, watching movies, etc. You get to sit around and tell stories and hear about each other\u2019s lives.\u00a0 It is just a really rare circumstance where you truly get to know people at a level that doesn\u2019t happen in everyday life.\u00a0 It was a marvelous week and we just loved the group we went with.\u00a0 My only regret is that we couldn\u2019t have invited everyone we know to come on one big trip, but if we did we would never get to know the people as well, so instead we will just have to keep planning more and more trips so we can eventually get everyone down there with us to enjoy the amazing experience that Lake Powell provides.<\/p>\n

I believe that the people we associate with as friends in life play a big part in determining the person we will become.\u00a0 Our friends help form our character.\u00a0 That is why it is so important to surround ourselves with people who have the qualities we want to emulate in our lives, and to teach our children to do the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends whom we choose.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/span> – Chinese Proverb<\/p>\n

I know that I would not be the person I am today if I had not been surrounded by amazing friends who taught me how to be a better person with their example. I have been incredibly blessed to have friends that are incredibly good people.\u00a0 They are kind and sincere and genuine.\u00a0 They put others needs above their own.\u00a0 They are unselfish and positive and uplifting.\u00a0 I truly love my friends! Just tonight a friend of mine, who has been going through a very hard time herself personally, stopped by to drop off a card game that she knew I loved because she heard I had been trying to find it. Here she is dealing with serious health problems in her own family and yet she took time out of her day to drop off a card game for me because she knew it would lift my day.\u00a0 What an amazing friend!!! (Love ya Diane!)<\/p>\n

\u201cBlessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God\u2019s best gifts.\u00a0 It involves many things, but above all, the power of getting out of oneself, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.\u201d<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 -Thomas Hughes<\/p>\n

I have seen firsthand the impact good friends can have in our lives.\u00a0 Perhaps this week we could all evaluate the friendships we have in our life and seek to surround ourselves by those friends who build us up and help us be better people.\u00a0 Then we should all make it our goal to be the best friend we can be to those in our lives through sincerity, selflessness, genuine listening, servicing them, graciously accepting their service to us, and being positive and uplifting at all times.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/strong> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 – Dale Carnegie<\/p>\n

Have a great new week everyone!<\/p>\n

~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you find yourself racing through life, slow down long enough to take along some good friends.\u201d\u00a0 – L. Tom Perry This last week I was reminded of how blessed I am to have amazing friends in my life.\u00a0 My husband and I were able to spend last week with a group of 15 friends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4309,5109,1365,550,1204,155,240,1939,5112,5107,1570,151,51,189,591,30,364,29,4297,244,152,34,5111,216,619,1254,535,35,529,3990,153,2407,5110,1925,4746,1169,5108,22,95,192],"class_list":["post-5050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-admire","tag-appreciating","tag-be-a-friend","tag-blessed","tag-caring","tag-character","tag-children","tag-chinese-proverb","tag-dale-carnegie","tag-diane-linford","tag-emulate","tag-example","tag-family","tag-friends","tag-friendship","tag-gift","tag-goal","tag-god","tag-good-friends","tag-grateful","tag-impact","tag-integrity","tag-interested","tag-kind","tag-l-tom-perry","tag-lake-powell","tag-listen","tag-love","tag-loving","tag-noble","tag-positive","tag-qualities","tag-selflessness","tag-sincere","tag-sincerity","tag-slow-down","tag-thomas-hughes","tag-trip","tag-uplifting","tag-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5050"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5052,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050\/revisions\/5052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}