Now that I’ve been here two years (tomorrow!) and have accepted that my vision of where I would find community is clearly so very different than God’s plan for filling that need, I’ve found myself actually having the opportunities to fellowship for which my heart has so longed. Lunch with a friend. A group of women committing to praying daily for one another’s walk in marriage and parenting. A gathering of moms digging in to what Biblical motherhood looks like. As a friend said as we parted last week, after we shared our frustrations in breaking past the cliques and facades we’d encountered, “Maybe we’re each other’s people.”
I can’t tell you how good it feels to have those little drops of refreshment flowing into my depleted bucket. For two years now, I’ve been clinging to the lifeline of text messages and occasional phone calls with a core group of women who have poured into my life over the years. Those relationships are so deeply precious to me; God has given me a priceless gift in the sisterhood I share with these friends. But in the day to day, I’ve struggled to find an anchor here, a place for spiritual connection that is comfortable enough to encourage and disciple, yes… but also to offer rebuke and be the iron sharpening iron that actually grows both parties in the way that only a transparent, God-centered relationship can.
And I get it.
It’s hard to let others in to established friendships. It’s hard to remember to include the new people who show up for Sunday School, or to ask for the planning input of the neighbor who moved in after the last block party. It’s hard to make a break in conversation that invites the newcomer in, and even harder to make room in an intimate place for someone who doesn’t share the history you’ve built with others over the years.
It’s hard to go deeper than surface level with the women you meet in the course of your daily life: the mom whose daughter has piano at the same time yours does, or who floats around at the same co-op and keeps ending up at your lunch table.
Heck, it’s hard sometimes to even figure out who’s lonely. It’s easy to overlook the mom who doesn’t exactly look like you, or who has more kids, or no kids, or who doesn’t send her kids to public school, or homeschool, or who looks standoffish, or seems o.k…. or whatever criteria it is that you use when deciding whether or not to fold someone in to your circle.
Community is hard. It just is. It’s hard and it’s usually messy, and it makes us stretch to places we don’t want to touch. But it’s necessary. It’s valuable. And, for a homeschooling, Christian wife and mother, it’s a sweet reminder of who we are, why we do what we do, and who has called us to walk in this life.
I’m so, so grateful to feel the arms of my Father in heaven closing around me as He leads me to places where I’m reminded that His leading in my life is good, gentle, and full of love. I’m grateful for the laughter of the past week, where I’ve been able to discuss the nuances of raising teenage sons and of our foibles in the first years of homeschooling. I’m grateful for the tears I’ve shared over raising children with special needs and again over the refinement that is marriage. I’m grateful for differing opinions on federal funding and vaccinations and college and Bible translations. I’m grateful for the chance to discuss foster care, moving, church, and birth control. I’m grateful for the presence of women who have clearly delighted in their children, their estate as wives, and their place in God’s economy.
I’m feeling refreshed. Known. Wanted. Invited. I pray that you are experiencing the same!