Hobbies And Friends

Hobbies and Friends

Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

It began as a hobby. In the middle of the night, as I soothed the baby back to sleep while scrolling Instagram to keep my eyes from falling closed, I ran across people who were selling preloved clothing on their Instagram accounts. Intrigued, I followed a few boutiques to see how they did it. Then, I purchased a few items. Finally, I decided that I’d like to try it out myself.

Within a few months, I had joined a few online groups with other women who had the same business model, cross-promoting our items. There was one group that chatted almost every day, and as time went on, I began to see them as friends rather than simply fellow business owners. Two of them were even located in Minnesota, several hours’ drive from where I lived.

As the months bled into years and our friendship deepened, one of my Minnesotan friends told us that she was going to move and couldn’t take her inventory across the country. If I was willing to drive up to get it, Rose said, I was welcome to have it. Her offer was generous and completely unexpected, and I jumped at the chance to pick up the hundreds of items she had on hand and to meet my friend in person.

As the appointed day dawned bright and sunny, I hit the freeway and arrived around noon. Over the next several hours, we went out for lunch with another friend, returned to Rose’s house and met her children, and finally settled down into cushy chairs to spend time talking about our lives. The time flew by.

As I left that evening, it struck me that the visit wasn’t about clothes at all. My friend’s generosity didn’t just extend to the bags of clothing we had hefted into my trunk; it was also revealed in the caring, thoughtful conversations we had together. Both of us treasured one another—not because of the material items we used as a pretext for our visit but rather because of the friendship we strengthened that day.

— Kristin

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

Give generously of your time or a resource to a friend.