What started as a night of charm bracelets, Shirley Temples, and girl dinner quickly turned into something sacred—an encounter with the God who delights in His daughters. As girls showed up Sunday night, they expected to have a fun evening filled with pizza, nail painting, charm bracelets, and a bounce house but the evening was much more than fun.

The “New Year, New You!” dreams always ended in disappointment for me. It was more like “New Year, same old me.” Here’s what I do about it.

Shared experiences over time create meaningful bonds that are difficult to replicate when relationships are new or young. I call them “friendships with history,” or, to borrow a Hebrew term, friends we yāda’ or “know experientially.” Yāda’ describes the journey from head knowledge to heart knowledge, where information about God becomes intimate knowledge of God (see Psalm 46:20).