My whole senior year was spent with someone I thought I would be friends with forever. We had the same sense of humor, we liked the same type of music, food, sports, ways of having fun, and just about anything that made two people know they were meant to be best friends. I gave up the luxury of getting out of school early and taking a nap to go get her food for lunch. Something I can guarantee you I wouldn't have done for anyone else. I spent almost every weekend at her house. I was going to be the cool aunt to her two kids. People referred to us as Thelma and Louise. We were truly two peas in a pod. Although I had just met her that year, we instantly clicked and it felt like we had been friends since birth. She always said she never knew what she would do without me and I said the same. On my last day of high school, she texted me to make sure I was okay and promised me that she was going to make this the best summer of my life. Well, she did. It was the best summer of my life. But not in the way you would expect.

Just a few days after our one year of being friends, I guess she finally learned that she could, in fact, do life without me. I hadn't yet learned the same. The person I would have taken a bullet for suddenly became the person behind the trigger. So to say the least, I was heartbroken. I woke up in tears. I went to bed in tears. I stared at my phone all day for a month waiting for any type of notification from her. Nothing but silence came.

I begged and I begged God to just send her any type of sign that would lead her to speak to me again. I knew we could never be friends again, but I just needed some type of closure from her. I just needed a final goodbye. But God knew I needed something so much more than that. I needed to move on. I couldn't care for both of us anymore. I thought it would kill me to move on, but somewhere deep down I knew it was killing me more to hold on.

God had been telling me “no" for a while. That wasn't the answer I wanted, so I continued to ignore him. Until one day I woke up and she wasn't the first thing to pop into my mind. One day I woke up and there weren't any tears. I didn't reach for my phone as soon as I opened my eyes. I was finally moving on. After months of presenting my request to God, he gently told me to let it go a little more each day. And each day it got a little bit easier.

At first, I didn't want to believe His plans were better than mine. I was so caught up in being angry from not getting what I wanted that I failed to stop and realize God was protecting me. He was redirecting me down a path that has since brought me more love, recognition, and success than I could have ever imagined.

God always has our ultimate good in mind. Unfortunately, this means that he often has to pry things from us that we wanted so bad to hold onto. I had a really hard time coming to terms with that, but through those few months of pleading my case to him and feeling as though he just wasn't listening to me, I eventually learned that this wasn't the case at all. He wasn't being cruel. He wasn't depriving me in any way. He heard my prayers. He just knew better than I did.

And that is why that was the best summer of my life. It was the summer I came to know the strength God blessed me with and the summer I became closer with God than ever before. He took something away from me but he never left me empty. He filled that space with his love and his blessings. He forced me to let go of an earthly desire and open my heart to him. And that is the amazing thing about God. Even a "no" had goodness written all over it.