Year in review part 2: Friends

In my last post, I focused on my family and God's grace in our lives over the past year. I'd like to turn now to my friends.
God's been teaching me a lot about what true friendship looks like recently. I need to reach out to others and form new relationships without neglecting the good friends I've already got. I tend to drift away from people after a few years for whatever reason; over this last year, some old acquaintances have come back into my life and our relationships have been renewed.

There's something very comforting about having someone who has known you for a while. You have those shared experiences and old jokes that you still find funny. An old friend doesn't need to dig for conversation topics, things just flow and an hour or two passes before you realize it. They know about your past awkward phases and bad haircuts, and love you just the same. I'm so appreciative of my long time friends. You know who you are, and I'm so glad you're in my life! My heart is fuller, my spirit richer because of your friendship. You put up with my faults and encourage me to be a better person. I love being able to share my weirdness and nerdy self with you. I might not see you for awhile, but we can pick up where we left off and have a grand time when we hang out together.We can talk about silly, shallow, light-hearted things, but we can also be real, deep and open with who we are. I love that. And I love you! I look forward to this coming year and getting to know you even better.

On the flip side, I've had to let some people slip out of my life, because I realized they're just not worth keeping in touch with. The problem with our Facebook culture is that relationships that would have naturally grown distant otherwise maintain this artificial intimacy. You see each other's status updates and Like their cute kitty pictures....but you haven't seen or spoken to them in person for over a year (or more). It's not like you hate them, they're actually pretty cool....but you don't have any kind of real interaction or relationship beyond the Internet.

Facebook is great for keeping in touch with long distance friends--I love that we can stay up to date and keep up with what's going in each other's lives. It supplements other communication. But for those casual acquaintances you wouldn't have kept in touch with, it can become kind of weird. We were friends once or saw a lot of each other at a particular point, some shared experience in our lives. But now? I haven't seen you since high school or whenever. It makes me feel mean to unfriend someone, but I realize I don't need to keep in touch with everybody. I can let them go and not be a bad person.

And some friendships I valued more than the other person and had different expectations for. I know that they don't place the same value on our relationship that I do and that will never change. I just have to accept that and stop trying to convince myself otherwise. It hurts a little bit to realize that and deal with it but it's the healthy and wise thing to do. I don't want to try to believe a lie. Letting go and moving on is the wise thing to do. I need to invest in relationships that are mutual not one-sided.

So, it's been the year of renewal and letting go, but also making new friends, relationships in their embryo phase. As I wrote recently, I finally found a church to call my own. Antioch Community Church has been a breath of fresh air into my life. For many reasons--which I don't need to go into here--I stopped going to church while in college and never got back into it once I graduated. I'd been sporadically attending the church I grew up in, but I'm a different person now and it's not the right fit anymore. I'm thankful for that church family--I grew up there and learned so much. Some of those people are more like family than those I'm actually related to! It's really like having a third side of my family. So this is not a diss to you, old church. I love many of you and will definitely continue to keep in touch. But it's predominantly a church of families and older singles, and I want relationships with my peers too. Also, it's in the suburbs and I feel called to the city seeing as how I've grown up here in Minneapolis.

So, Antioch. I checked it out a few times over the summer and committed to attending it within the last few months. I have never felt so welcomed as a stranger in a new place. I've gotten more plugged in as I've been able to re-arrange my work schedule. I'm hoping to go through their membership class coming up in January. There is something so REAL going on there, and I want to be part of that. I'm really excited to see what this next year will bring as I get to know more people. I feel like I can really share who I am--not just the "How are you?" "Good." "And you?" "Great." exchanges typical of churchy culture. I have gotten a phenomenal response of encouragement and desire for friendship back from sharing just a snippet of my testimony in church. I feel like I can be myself--crazy bright clothes, flowers in my hair and all the rest. I feel no need to hide any aspect of myself or partition off parts that might be unpalatable (part of that comes from getting older and more confident in myself too). For the first time in a long time, I'm excited to get up and go to church on Sundays. I look forward to it! I'm excited to go to community group and get to know people better. So, new church, looking forward to the next 12 months with you.

Continue on to Part 3: Me