…but ya gotta have friends!

In which I talk once again about investing in one’s community, such that one can reap the benefits of said community, because it’s kind of a soapbox of mine, and I’ve not been on it lately, so here we go.

It was Rest Time on a Sunday. Justin and one kid were out running errands. One kid was watching TV. Two kids were napping. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down on the couch with my book. A friend texted me, regarding how several families had met at the park after church that day:

“We should do this more often!”

Yes, please!

(See here and here for the previous iterations of “the post about building community” from other moments in my life. It’s so important, blah blah blah…)

But seriously. It’s SO. IMPORTANT.

Never before in our nine-and-a-half years of marriage have Justin and I lived under the same roof for more than two years. (I mean we both lived under the same roof together, all the time in each place, but the place changed every two years or less.)

We’ve now been in this house for 2 years and 4 months! Family “World” Record! 

So I just want to reflect on what it’s taken to get to the point we’re at in our community, and sit and bask in the comfort of still being in it. Perhaps it will encourage you to continue to pour into your own local community, in a making-friends and meeting your actual next-door-neighbors way, moreso than a “community service” way.

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In the company Justin is with now, “up the ladder” is alllll here, in Houston, and their retirement plan was one of the pulls to change jobs again, so we are here indefinitely. Maybe forever. This–staying in one spot for more than five years and maybe forever–has never even been on the table in the past, with his chosen career path and the structures of the companies we were with before. It’s something I didn’t know I would cherish so much, but now that it’s my reality, I feel so much peace about it. I don’t feel FOMO about probably never being ex-pats. That was a legitimate possibility with two of Justin’s previous jobs, and it was so exciting! But I can take exciting trips. Maybe I actually want my “real life” to be a little more boring and more stable. That is what the peace I feel about maybe having all the rest of my babies in this same town, with the same doctor, what????!, and possibly having all my kids go through the same elementary school from start to finish, seems to be telling me.

This home, will likely be “Home.” in perhaps all of my kids’ childhood memories. My oldest was only 5 when we moved here. I think we can definitely fit up to eight kids in here. I like this neighborhood. Who knows?

This permanence is so freeing. There is both less urgency, and more importance, on making good, good friends here. Less urgent, because I can take the time to really get to know people, and curate our “family” of friends, because I don’t need it all done by next month, before we move again. And more important, because these will be the people my kids grow up with, hang out with, try to emulate whether they realize it or not, for years.

This is so exciting!

I don’t have to hurry up and meet all the people I “need” to meet; I’m sure I will meet them, sometime, and after that, I’ll still have a lot of time to work on the friendship. I don’t have to continue to force friendships with people I’ve already spent effort on, when I realize we just don’t “click.” It’s okay to have friendly acquaintances that I enjoy talking to for five minutes after church, but never invite for an individual playdate, or maybe never for a second playdate after realizing at the first one that our parenting philosophies or priorities in life or conversation styles just don’t align. I can have several very good friends, and yet I don’t have to be Best Friends with everyone. It’s like elementary school again. I can be friendly with every kid in the class, but still only invite 3-4 to my birthday party. I can have circles of intimacy. And not letting someone into the middle isn’t a rejection of her as a person or a judgment on her character; it’s respecting my own need to have the Right People in my inner circle, and giving myself the time to find them.

I can keep socializing and ministry ideas on the backburner and just wait for the right timing. There are a million good ideas. There may only be a few ideas that are good for me, right now. There may only be one! I can focus on that one, without feeling so keenly the opportunity cost of the other thing I’m not doing right now. I can do it later. Or someone else can do it and invite me. Or maybe it will never happen. And that’s okay. Because the right thing for me, right now, is the Right Thing.

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I don’t want to skip over the fact that I still have Imposter Syndrome. I’m on the planning committee for the moms group at my church, and I feel like I don’t deserve to be, because I’ve only been here post-covid, and I don’t know how things were here before covid, and I don’t know everyone the way our moms group president seems to know literally everyone (in our church of 5,000+ families). But the truth is, I know more people than most of the people who are helping to plan anything, because I’ve moved so many times, so I had to learn how to meet people, and I was better than ever at this skill when we moved here. And I understand what it feels like to be the New Girl outside the context of school age life. And I’m willing to allot both mental space and time out of my schedule to coming up with, discussing, and executing ideas. I’ve had practice with those, too, from being on the Peer Ministry team in college, to starting the Young Families group at my last parish, to attending, hosting, and leading small groups under umbrellas of parent organizations as well as of my own volition, by word of mouth, in my living room, over the past 15ish years. I’m not afraid to try a new idea, and it’s less “risky” than ever to try one, knowing that if one idea fails, I still have years to figure out what works through trial and error.

The non-urgency also gives me the time to be my most ME self. I am naturally an introvert. Certainly a “social introvert”: I love hanging out with people I already know, and I like going to big events, and hosting parties, etc. But I do need quiet time to recharge. Now that I have four children, I need even more protection on my Me Time. More of my minutes are automatically spent on my family–but I still need to spend the same amount of time on myself, so I can keep loving and serving them my best–which leaves fewer minutes to spend on anything outside my family. This is something I am continually coming to terms with: that I can’t keep planning and play-date-ing the same amount that I used to. What time I do have is less flexible, too: I’m tied to the school drop offs and pickups; six people eat a lot of food, so meal planning and grocery shopping take more time and I have to cook more days a week; and six people wear sooo many clothes, especially the one-year-old who insists on feeding himself (I could write a whole ’nother post about how Laundry Increases Exponentially, Not Linearly, with Additional Family Members). Etc. But it’s okay if I don’t “do all the fun things here right away!” I have, you know, “maybe forever” to do them.

I only have today to “be faithful to my vocation today,” which means I have to actively prioritize my family’s and my own needs. I don’t want to burn out. I want to thrive.

Of course part of thriving is having friends. But, “everything in its place,” yes?

Anyway, to get back to basking in the comfort of an intentionally built community, while also making my point that having friends does help me to thrive… I don’t know if it’s mostly hormones from pregnancies and nursing, or just generally getting older, or the environmental changes of moving different places between the midwest and southeast texas (humidity, or no humidity, that is the question), but this past year I have had no idea how to take care of my hair and not be annoyed with its appearance all the time. However, I recently got some hair product advice from a friend–a new friend, a friend I’ve seen around for two full years now, but only in the past six months have had real conversations with–and I feel so un-frizzy for the first time since my last “short” haircut when I had time to blow dry daily! Beginning with the sleek hair conversation, and continuing on the pretense of following up about that, so many more meaningful conversations and invitations have ensued. Our husbands are becoming friends, too. Our kids are becoming friends. Her oldest (only 5) goes out of his way to say hi to me when he sees us. This is how family-friendships begin. And next thing you know, you’re planning a karaoke Moms Night Out. Maybe next month. Or maybe next year. It will happen sometime, and it will be fun to look forward to the entire time until it does happen, because I’m probably not going to move away before then, this time!

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I really don’t have time to recount all the ways the Holy Spirit has been moving in our community here. Some of them are step-by-step astounding. Like, how Justin got his new job. It was a series of being in the right place at the right time, talking to the right people, and saying Yes to the right opportunities. If any step had been missing from the chain, it couldn’t have happened. But it did.

We didn’t do it, we were just here.

But we weren’t hiding in our house. To borrow a phrase from myself, we were signing up, and showing up. We still are. I’m constantly reevaluating what new things and people we need to make room for, and what needs to go, to make the room.

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A quick note about hospitality:

Justin and I both enjoy organizing events and hosting people at our house. Inviting one family (at a time) to dinner. Inviting five couples to our living room once a month. Inviting a dozen other dads to a brewery. Inviting my small group plus their kids for a tea party. Inviting coworkers plus their families for a crawfish boil. We like to offer good food, but we hope to offer even better company. I promise to try to clean the bathroom for you, but there may or may not still be crumbs on the dining room floor, toys strewn across the living room, shoes near the door, socks on the stairs awaiting a trip up to the hamper, full laundry baskets sticking out of the laundry room, and so on. Kids live here…

But I still want you in my space. Let’s do life together, even though we’re not perfect.

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We’ve been here over a thousand days. We might be here 10,000 more. I’m like, really happy where we’re at.

…it’s like God had a good plan for my family, or something, when He asked us to move again.

Say Yes to God, y’all. He knows what He is doing.