We’ve spent each Wednesday in April sharing our own “friendship on purpose” stories, with topics to inspire you as you planned to gather with your own friends. And we invited you to host your own “Girlfriend Gathering” this past Saturday, to get together with the women God puts on your heart for a few hours of fun and fellowship! We sure hope you did!
We can’t wait to hear what you did this weekend, so be sure to read Shannan’s beautiful words and then come back and link-up your own friendship on purpose stories with us!
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I’ve always been a homebody.
After my first taste of working from home, some twelve years ago, I swore I’d never go back. I had arrived. I honed my skill-set of puttering around in sweatpants while cranking out high quality work without leaving the comfort of my living room. My interactions with others were at a minimum and, God Bless America, this was even before the height of video conferencing.
In the years that followed, we brought home our three kiddos. Life took on a new sort of rhythm, one revolving around nap-times, snacks, and tall stacks of library books. They were my new community, and we grew together.
This year, for the first time, they all went off to a small public school at the end of our street. Weighing what matters most for our prized treasures, we see real value in the knocking around of their little lives with the lives of others.
For the first time, my house cleared out every morning at 7:30 and didn’t rally again until 3:00.
The timing seemed perfect. After years of writing for free, for my own personal joy, my work was shifting. It would be the year I began saying, “I’m a writer,” and meaning it.
But the strangest thing happened. Rather than feeling free and easy, I was simply numb. My senses were dulled. I was distracted and complacent. I had arrived at this holy grail of quiet solitude — an introverted writer’s dream — only to discover my muse had left the building.
For months, I fought to regain my footing. I worked hard at trying to figure out how to work hard, perplexed that I was somehow more capable in the midst of chaos.
Just last week, I spoke at a morning MOPS meeting then lugged my laptop into a quiet corner of Panera, with my veggie sandwich and my tea. To my right were three people shouting about the advantages of all-inclusive vacations, to my left sat two female bankers giggling like kids at recess.
My words flowed. I was back.
I still can’t wrap my head around why a homebody like me operates better in a bustling coffee shop than from the serenity of my own cup of Earl Grey with my favorite blanket draped across my lap. I think it probably has something to do with community and our desperate need for it.
As attached to my stretchy pants and yesterday’s hair as I may be, my life can’t be lived well in a vacuum. Home will always be waiting for me with its cozy familiarity and unique solace. I’ll always need what it offers.
But I’m finding I need the loud, messy, inconvenient places just as much. I need human connection. I need the noise of other lives, a reminder that I can keep playing my melody and they can keep playing theirs. We sound so much better together.
This is my garden, my small patch of soil. My daily life, though often solitary, is not lived alone. We grow together, sharing the same sun, the same showers. Like my kids, who learn and play and figure out this kingdom of heaven on earth alongside friends and companions, I need to pay attention to my roots and bloom with all the other roses.
This is what I was made for. The best of me flows from a place of embracing this wild, unexpected, beautiful life of community.
The same goes for you, sister.
Tell me about your garden. Where are you planted? How does your community help you grow?
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Community Challenge: Did you get together with your girlfriends this weekend? We’d love to read your stories and see your photos! Join the link-up below and share a blog post about your time together or link up an Instagram photo you took. Thank you for being brave and choosing to create friendship on purpose with us!
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The best of us flows from a place of embracing the wild, unexpected, beautiful life of community. {Tweet this!}
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Leave a Comment
Shannan,
I gathered with “a” friend…I guess I’m better at one on one (though I do have to say I miss the (in)RL experience). Getting out and meeting with others face to face is so important…it’s way too easy to get locked up inside in front of our laptops. To feel a friend squeeze your hand or give you a hug of compassion and understanding is core to our being. After all God made us purely for the reason because He wants to be in relationship with Him. I guess you could say it’s in our DNA to live relationally. Thanks for the encouragement this morning to make friendship a priority.
Blessings,
Bev
Core to our being. Yes!! Thanks for this, Bev.
Dear Shannon, Just read this post and wanted to reach out and share with you too.
Back in February 2015 I went through a few long weeks of feeling some what alone, very lonely and had thoughts that not many people were interested or even really cared about me or the friendship that I try to share each day.
I had God in my life along side me, as ever but there felt like there was some thing missing.
Well when you talk to God, he listens and then acts in ways you often wonder about afterwards.
Out of the blue one night I received an email from a friend, desperately reaching out to me, in words that he had never, up to then, done previously, as he tried to understand why his eighteen year marriage had now failed and the woman he deeply loved, had walked away to live with another man.
How did I react, well firstly I prayed, then I sent a very sympathetic email in reply and later that evening I telephoned him and got him to talk.
Since then we have had many God guided conversations over his feelings, how he and his two children are really coping and I have just gone on supporting and caring as best I can.
Unlike a lot of his other so called friends, I refuse to walk away and dismiss his problems as just part of life.
To him and I our marriage commitments and our Christian paths are intertwined and our love for that special person we committed too, so deep, that we have both found it painful to come to terms with our marriage failures.
Exactly where God is leading our friendship, only he knows but I feel that he has asked me to walk with my friend and be there for him.
What a beautiful picture of friendship that knows a thing or two about hard days. So glad your friend has YOU!
Thanks for reading and replying. As we write I have just today put another card and letter in the post to him, and praying that they help him to know that some one out there does care.
Shannan, I loved this. The noise of other lives can ground our own. Isolation may be okay for short periods of time, but not for always. My boys bring lots of noise to my days—burps and noises from other places. They also bring random words and thoughts that make me smile big.
God has also placed me in a small community of women. We’re doing life together—the fun times and the hard times. We’re growing in grace and sharing real with each other. I’m so blessed to add my bits of noise to the mix, and be blessed with theirs. We challenge each other to go deeper with Jesus. And I need that from time to time. 🙂
What you have is a true blessing, and I know you know it!
Shannan, oh my goodness, I’m in love with this post <3
As a homeschool mom of two boys, I've never had much time alone. I've spent my years waking way before them and using my mornings trying to be creative, knowing that once they were awake, it was all over. However, now that one is married (and obviously gone) and one is 16 and spends much more time sleeping and hibernating in his room, I have time….and quite frankly, I sometimes walk around here like I'm lost. I'm a lunatic because I still say that I need quiet, then when I have it, I want my kids back. Love your style and oh, by the way, I found you in my favorite mag….Artful Blogging 🙂 Blessings!
I’m so glad you found me at AB! That was a fun little project, and even better that it’s enlarging MY community a little bit. Thanks for saying hello!
I had the opportunity to meet with one friend. I did not mention to her about the girl friend gathering but we had a great time chatting and catching up. I also added to my “me time” list (an idea I got from the recent inbloom book club “The Fringe Hours”) to plan another girl friend gathering soon. I love the idea in general; more specifically the food ideas, crafts and opportunity to encourage one another.
You are a wonderful writer Shannan! I so appreciate your words and how you model life in community. It has inspired me to make connection with other mothers a higher priority in my daily life.
Hi Shannan – I have known for many years for me to defeat my depression I need the interaction of other people and working from home would be a death knell for me. I was a stay-at-home mom for ten years which I feel so blessed to have been able to do (& actually loved) but I was always busy in ways that kept me connected to adults…church…a singing group…side job, etc.
In the years since my kids left home I came to realize how valuable adult interaction is to me. All this to say I’m actually an introvert who needs time alone to recharge but thrives being around other people. Weird?
If you’re weird, I’m weird with you. 🙂
Dear Shannan, I love your blog, been following about a year. I soooooo, identify with your (in)courage today. I blog as gis-butterfly…..I’m a home school mom (1996-2012) I went to college with my girls as they finished high school taking college class. Then I spent 2 years in temp jobs trying to reclaim the me I was BK, before kids. Last summer my empty nest hit minus4….that is my 4 minus at least 4 friends…I gain 20 pounds and felt lost in the silence. This past Christmas I heard I could apply a the local elementary school and use my business degree for educational training. Now I am content,losing weight, spending 2 hours a day tanning my feet on the blacktop and time helping kids not fall through the cracks of the public school system. I volunteered at a faith based pregnancy center and started selling healthy alternative cleaning products. Using my past in ways I didn’t expect I would ever do.
I feel a blog post coming, but first I need to apply some sunscreen to my feet and get to work.
Well, I totally LOVE this. Good for you! I’m such a passionate advocate for public school…it just really takes a village. And people like you offer so much hope to what can seem, at times, both dismal and daunting.
Have a great day on the job! 🙂
People soup. It feeds us. We are made for community.
Shannan,
Life has been so busy & stressful that I completely forgot about the get together! I’m a lot like Bev and do well with 1 or 2 friends. I enjoy being a homebody and doing small groups during my week. Community is important to me and I have a small group of women I connect with both at church and work. I contact them and check on their families all the time. I want them to know how much they are loved and cared for. They do the same for me also. It is important–core to my being to give hugs and let people see Christ in me!