A Book Review from The Joyful Life On “The One Year Daily Acts of Friendship: 365 Days to Finding, Keeping, and Loving Your Friends”

When our family transitioned from homeschooling to traditional school, we trudged through a lot of new ground with our daughters in preparation. One constantly revisited conversation centered around building relationships of sacred value. Two years into this new community and we still remind them almost daily, “If you want a good friend, you first have to be a good friend.”

Friendships are hard. Whether it’s my middle schooler facing difficult changes, awkward maturing, and enough drama for Broadway; my Kindergartener distraught over playground playmates; my fifth grader figuring out where she belongs and how to break in; or me—late thirties and still scaling the difficulties of building meaningful connections. No matter what stage of life you’re in, challenges abound when trying to mesh imperfect people. As adults, sometimes that particular ‘hard’ is one we are quick to set aside when our schedules, margin, or energy levels say it’s simply too much. But in the family of God, community is to be a precious priority.

We were designed to live in relationship—first with our Creator, and then with those that He purposely places in our path. Friendships are to be a holy echo of the intimate connection we hold with our Savior. Friendships are hard, but they are a ‘hard’ we can and must pursue wholeheartedly. If you need any convincing about the power and blessing friendships can be in our lives and how indisposable this relational sisterhood really is, you won’t want to miss this incredible new resource.

The sweet friends of The Ruth Experience—Kristin Demery, Julie Fisk, and Kendra Roehl—have done it again. Their newest treasure, “The One Year Daily Acts of Friendship: 365 Days to Finding, Keeping, and Loving Your Friends,” is for EVERY woman. No matter your age, no matter how good or terrible of a friend you consider yourself, no matter how good or terrible of friends you have, this book is for you and I’m confident you’ll be blown away by the rich content within.

These friendship and kindness masters have curated 365 unique and thoughtful devotions that incorporate engaging personal stories, truth straight from Scripture, and daily practical challenges to immediately put learning into action.

We each desperately need authentic community, but getting there can be a constant struggle. I love how “The One Year Daily Acts of Friendship” explores what genuine friendship really looks like, but doesn’t leave you there. This beautiful trio of wisdom and wit vulnerably share from their own experiences, hardships, and triumphs, ensure God is always at the center, then provide you the tools to find and nurture lasting relationships for yourself.

You don’t know what you don’t know and you won’t know until you try. With all humility, I would consider myself a very ‘good friend’—the one who does most of the pursuing, the encouraging, the inviting, so I wrongly assumed much of the content would be redundant to ideas I already knew or frequently incorporated into my own relationships. I was absolutely astounded at the depth of thought and intentionality in these pages! I am so glad I didn’t miss out on all that is offered in this heartfelt work of art. With each day’s devotional, I was challenged, enlightened, affirmed, inspired, and stretched to think about friendship in new ways and with fresh perspective. I found myself instantly eager to implement the daily actionable step, and it was amazing how that simple prod in the morning would linger in my mind all day, keeping me aware and ready to bless another with what I’d uncovered.