#BLOGTOBER + #WRITE31DAYS
Tuesday, October 20 :: Tell us about your current season of friendships. Or just list your best real-life buds!
The morning after our visit with our sweet friends, Duston and I went out for coffee on the Boardwalk. We sat and ate our chocolate croissants from the bakery and threatened the ducks as they waddled to our feet begging for food no differently than four labradors. We reflected on the previous evening, how much our friends displayed the hurts and pains of moving to a new location. When the excitement of the move fades, and realities of friendships that are miles away and unfamiliar is all around. Duston mentioned in conversation that although the evening was probably refreshing to our friends, how much he needed that evening. Yes, there was a baseball game happening inches away from us; however, it was the conversation and the interaction with another Christian couple that was the true highlight of his night.
I sat there, not really taking it in until much later that day. It was by the pool, while he was out golfing, that it hit me what we had both been longing.
It had been season after season for us of losing intimate friendships. Lifestyle changes with moving from singleness to married life. Moves of deep relationships, regardless if it was cross country or to another suburb on the other side of the city. Within months of each other, we had several friendships engagements and long term relationships fall apart for one reason or another -- which led to alterations in weekend gatherings and friends struggling to find themselves in these new twists and turns of life.
Regardless of the reason, none of our friendships were natural anymore, mostly forced gatherings that prompted joyous times. However the frequency was becoming less and less due to our lives heading in opposite directions. Babies, marriages, job changes, cross country moves, singleness. They were all factors that led us to find ourselves without any friends in the same season of life as us. And it was leaving us raged and exhausted without even knowing it. We had both felt like no one could relate, could listen and understand, and we both truly needed somebody to interact with on that level other than each other.
So after a season of losing intimate friendships, we prayed and prayed hard. We wanted to find community again and as we began house searching this time last year, we looked toward a house that we could fill a bunch of people. One that would serve as a gathering place to host dinners, and stories, and build friendships.
It has been a long season but we are really finding ourselves moving out of it, and it is so refreshing...
