Girls' Night.

Girls' night...they're essential for every girl's well-being.

Last night, my friend April and I planned a girls' night for us two.

Some people may wonder why we would want to hang out with each other when we already spend 8+ hours a day working together at Christ's Church of the Valley. However, for us, we felt it was an essential step to take for our friendship.

Sometimes you just need to hang out with a person OUTSIDE the "usual" environment in order to best understand and appreciate her personality and uniqueness.

Although we both admitted at work that day that we felt exhausted beyond comprehension, we stayed committed to each other to have a Friday night sleepover-just like those good ole' middle school days! We ended up going to the Philadelphia Premium Outlets together with intentions of looking for matching outfits for STRETCH, a middle-school conference that takes place July 10th-July 12th. Of course, knowing us two, our search for outfits quickly disintegrated with our indecisiveness of what to get or why we were actually getting outfits and whether we should pursue the idea all together!

Instead, we ended up walking around the outlets and talking for an hour and a half. Talks of events at work, personal matters, issues at work, relationships, reflections of work and fun memories scattered our conversations. We continued our chats at home; talking about budgeting, work, humiliating ourselves with the Nintendo Wii, talking more about work, and of course, sitting by each other's bed at 2am ending the night as every girls' night ends...with talks about boys.

By the next morning, we both realized just how much CCV had invaded in on our girls' night. HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO NOT TALK ABOUT WORK WITH A CO-WORKER, EVEN ON A GIRLS' NIGHT! Realizing how much of our conversation centered around what were doing at CCV, we decided that our next girls' night would be "CCV Convo Free."

Really though, how do you develop a boundary between a healthy amount of talk and overwhelming a conversation with "work?" It's difficult when you work with your best friends-I want to share my thoughts about work with April, but at the same time, I don't want either of us to feel like our entire friendship revolves around work!

Regardless, April and I had a wonderful time. We're really learning more about each other and ourselves daily through the friendship that God is allowing to blossom between the two of us. It's incredible to have a friend who shares the same passion to be a strong warrior for Christ and His kingdom.

I'm sure that there will be plenty of girls' nights to come...CCV or no CCV convos included! :)