Rumors of My Death

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Ok, ok, I'm actually fairly certain that those rumors don't ACTUALLY exist, but I certainly have gotten a number of concerned emails and texts checking in if I am alright...all because I left Facebook. I did it with zero pomp and no circumstance. No pious letter goodbye or parting darts at what made 2020 so extra crazy. 

One day I was there and the next day I deactivated.

Friends, I'm ok. I promise. 

There comes a time in a woman's life where she just has to, if you will pardon the language, get past the bullshit. I don't say that to debase how everyone else chose to use Facebook.  I say it to call out how I was using Facebook. As I tell my kids just about every day (erm, hour), "not you, not your business. You are only responsible for how you react to the situation."

Let's just say that it was increasingly clear that I wasn't reacting the best way that I could to what was swirling around me.

No, I didn't create an echo chamber. I didn't unfriend people with whom I disagreed. I got into hearty debates and I generally stayed out of the topics on which I have no business commenting. (For pretty much all of that second category, the number is significantly higher than we pretend it to be.) 

The bottom line is that I let it consume me. Distract me. Inform me. Infuriate me. I set terrible limits. I allowed way too much anxiety in my life. I tried to keep up with way more than any one person should actually be able to do. 

One day I said enough. (My husband, if you are wondering, was DEEPLY influential in this decision. He still barely has a Facebook profile.) 

I realized about a week into leaving after a few frantic texts from our Swim Team President that there were some unforeseen consequences to my hasty departure- namely, that thousands of pictures I had uploaded to our site as the swim team photographer were now inaccessible. After a little back and forth, we figured out a new way to store and share pictures and I'm working on that in my spare (ha!) time. Crisis averted. 

And as far as I can tell, what I am missing is a myriad of people's opinions on news articles from sources that may or may not be trustworthy. I am missing hateful speech and name calling and a remarkable lack of humility. I am missing lies being shared as truth. I am missing thinking up my next status or wondering what people will say. I am missing the false connection, albeit lovely in the moment, that disconnecting from the real life around me and logging into Facebook creates. I am missing making Facebook WAY more important than I should ever have given it the power to be and I am missing letting it compete with God for my attention, heart and mind. 

In short, I am missing mothing at all, friends. 

Nothing that I can't gain through phone calls and emails, texts and marco polos, and when covid allows, in person visits. Real life hoohah celebrations and grace sister reunions and actual family time face to face. Firepits in my backyard and a Christmas sing-a-long on my driveway around a firepit with my neighbors.   

You remember. Life before Facebook. Before social media. When, as Phoebe once so elegantly put it, I spent more time with the three dimensional people in my life. When we didn't spend actual time with people thinking about how we will respond to the next jab or barb or how we will filter the story about it later. We just SPENT TIME with them. 

So, I suppose if there are rumors of my death, after all, they aren't actually all that exaggerated. I have put to death, in a way, that part of myself that couldn't tear herself away. That looked for friendship and well-being and hope and peace in an app that was only ever meant to steal those things from me. The part that couldn't set healthy enough limits to keep myself from destruction. 

I don't plan on coming back. I do plan on writing. If you've followed my blog via facebook, feel free to follow me here so you can continue the journey. I've cherished the feedback from my friends during this 10 year writing journey and I know that being off facebook and more mindful in my day is opening me up in new ways. I'm excited to explore them. I'm conquering old demons that have needed to be conquered for decades. I'm choosing life. In Person. I'm not running anymore from the parts of my story that build walls. 

Hopefully never again. 

Maybe this is my official Facebook goodbye, if it ever makes it there. I don't plan on going on to post it myself. 

Instead, I'm about to go cuddle with some of my favorite three-dimensional people and then call it a night. 

Facebook, Friendship and the Trials of Seventh Grade

Her text came through at a moment that I wasn't ready to read it.

"You are isolating yourself again," it read. I glanced at it, ignored it, and moved on with my day. It's a pandemic, for goodness' sake. EVERYONE is isolating him or herself. There's no problem here.

Except, there was. There IS, really.

About two weeks ago, I decided to get the heck off facebook, for the most part. I found that watching people call each other names, watching bullying, watching the extreme ways in which we are willing to be keyboard warriors that shout and rant from the privacy and seclusion of our homes was taking a huge toll on me. Particularly on top of all the uncertainties with the pandemic. It was affecting the way I parent, how I do my job, which thoughts and voices I let set up shop in my head during the day. It was sucking time from my day and energy from my soul. It was distracting, disheartening and, most of all, paralyzing. 

But why? 

As I have slowly detoxed from that world, God has brought something sharply into focus for me: Seventh grade is still a big part of how I do life.

Seventh grade was 30 years ago. I really only remember small details of that period in my life. A lot of what I know about it is what my mom has told me. Apparently I cried. A lot. Probably more in that year than I have total in the 30 years since. I dreaded school.  I isolated myself because the risk of friendship became too painful. I had very few friends and basically none at school.That was the only year of my life where that was true. I have mostly loved school, craved learning. I was mocked for being smart, left to sit alone at lunchtimes. In recent days, I've started to remember how closely I watched the clock on the wall in the cafeteria, begging for free time to finish. It's made me wonder if my inability to sit peacefully in the now, to practice mindfulness and presence, is rooted in that wish for time to hurry up and finish then. I started my struggle with insomnia, a struggle I deal with to this day. I started running to dissipate the anger and sadness, a practice that has served me well, but has also sometimes taken the place of the hard work of lament and healing. 

Mostly, though, in this past week, it has become clear to me that the way I view female friendships, the way I retreat and isolate and keep to myself, is largely a product of that time. I don't trust women. I don't trust that they aren't gossiping. That they don't have nasty things to say behind my back or, honestly, straight to my face. Have I had some truly amazing friendships with women since 7th grade? Absolutely. However, do I assume those women are rare and unusual? I do. Do I avoid all women's ministry events at church? 100%. 

As I think about how I feel after I spend time scrolling or commenting, I recognize that facebook doesn't bring out the best in me. Nor in many of us, if we are honest. It reinforces my assumptions. It tightens and defines the boxes I have built. It allows me to villify and "other" people and it drives me inward. Bottom line, it usually makes me worship and focus on what I can do or say or believe much more clearly than who God is or what He is doing or saying. 

And that's a dangerous place for me to linger. 

Seventh grade still has power. But I don't want it to. I have never really sat down and hashed it out. I've never truly asked God to heal me of those deep wounds. To show me the ways I have let the pain of that year drive my relationships for 30 years now. So while I am grateful to facebook for unearthing how clearly that period still has power, I also know that it's time for a real and true break so I can lot God do the deep work of healing that He is clearly in the business of doing.

If you have been a friend I have pushed away, I truly apologize. If you have been a friend I have othered or vilified, may God reveal that to me so I can ask for forgiveness. If you have been a woman who has pursued me and tried to love me and been met with rejection, please know that I am working on this. I truly am. Part of what God has been showing me during this pandemic is who I truly am, in all the areas that are good and beautiful but also all the areas that still need growth.   

In the meantime, I'm going to sit back and breathe. Journal. Paint. Run. Speak with humans face to face. Stay pretty much off of social media. Garden. Try to find my laughter and smile. Love and serve the heck out of humans on my ambulance. Pursue my husband. Use my punching bag. Pull out the guitar. Have amazing conversations about justice and shalom and grace because those things give me life. And just ask God to heal. To reveal. To redeem. And to infuse my soul with hope that this pandemic WILL one day end and that I will come out of it stronger, kinder and a better friend. 

The Belonging

A few nights ago I sat in a friend's living room, looking around at the beautiful faces of women with whom I have been meeting for over a year now. A common desire to understand more about God's heart for racial justice brought us together initially - and as more people have tested the waters and joined, our group has grown.

But as I looked around, I wasn't thinking about how much we have learned and how we have shared deep stories of woundedness or anger or missed opportunities or ignorance, although I am deeply thankful for the experience we've shared.

I was thinking that these are my people.

And I was also thinking that I am not so good at having people.

I am the kind of student who groaned when a teacher announced a group project. Who worried that when moving to college I would feel smothered by having to share a dorm room. (I didn't, by the way, because I ended up with a lifelong friend who was beyond awesome herself and who let me be me.) I feel touched out by tiny humans by right around 10 am every morning. "Touch" is my very last love language and the idea of someone hugging me or even, really, talking to me when I am upset is actually terrifying.

I am fiercely independent, the kind of person who wrote a song in high school that outlined who much I did NOT want to grow up and get married or have children. (It's true. My best friends at the time chose to perform it 10 years later at my wedding rehearsal dinner. Thanks, guys.)

For much of my life, I thought of it as a strength. But the older I get, I begin to wonder.

Yes, there is so much good that comes from it. Self-reliance, determinedness...those are good things when applied rightly. But when applied defensively they can shut a whole lot of good out. They can shut out a type of belonging and place someone perpetually on the outside. Sometimes it almost feels like I am watching my life as a spectator. Not feeling fully connected to anyone in the story, but committed nonetheless, to being there.

Brene Brown, in her book "Braving the Wilderness" says this:

"The special courage it takes to experience true belonging is not just about braving the wilderness, it's about becoming the wilderness. It's about breaking down the walls, abandoning our ideological bunkers, and living from our wild heart rather than our weary hurt...True belonging is not passive. It's not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It's not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it's safer. It's a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. We want true belonging, but it takes tremendous courage to knowingly walk into hard moments."

Look, I'm going to be appallingly honest for a moment. The four years that I have spent as a stay-at-home parent have been the loneliest of my life. The amount of emotional and physical energy it has taken me to do what I have done has caused me to choose to sacrifice the opportunity to truly belong anywhere else.

And I have made bad choices along the way. I have filled up on Facebook at the lowest points, rather than found a real face to be with. I have believed again and again that all I can do is what I can do right now for my kids and if there is nothing left of me by 7 pm, then so be it. I have clicked "interested" or "maybe" on a thousand different social opportunities and showed up at a tenth of them. I have bought into a culture that makes it easy to go back on my word because my word never meant much in the first place. Maybe or interested is a lazy way of saying "I think I should do that but I don't truly want to commit so I will pretend to commit for a few minutes and then easily back out at the last minute." 

But that way of life is never going to be right or good or, to be honest, holy. It's only going to provide momentum to stay in an endless spiral of exhaustion, isolation and loneliness. It's never going to be enough. I will never fully belong to myself or to anyone else that way. 

As lent has started, I've been asking myself and God what it is I could sacrifice right now. Lent was a fairly new concept to me a few years back. I grew up in a church that didn't adhere much to the liturgical calendar and I had no concept of how to observe this time of year. Most of the years I have attempted to observe lent, I would choose something that was hard to give up, but not necessarily ask God to meet me in that empty space. It was more of a test of my independence, of course.

Did I have the will power to part with something and succeed? I always did, of course.

And, you know, missed the point. 

So this year I was hesitant about "doing without". I feel like I have been stripped down to the bare bones of who I am anyway, so what more can I part with? 

Ironically, I had been on the waiting list for Ms. Brown's book for months and received the notification that it was all mine the morning that Lent began.

And as I began reading it and feeling punched over and over again at the very core of my gut, I just knew.

Lent has to do with my people.

The women I met with last week aren't my people just because we all believe the exact same things. Or have the same stories. They are my people because I've chosen to be radically myself in their presence, mess and all, as we hash through some really tough stuff. And they've let me be.

But I so rarely choose to live at that level of relational risk.

Listen, I'm not saying I have never had people before. There are some humans through the years with whom I could be my total self and still can to this day. Really, really good friends who stuck with me even when I made it very hard to do so. And I am so stinking grateful for every one of them, may God have mercy on their souls.

But mostly I have held myself back. Content to participate or know without the risk of being fully known. Afraid to really need anyone - keeping most friends far enough away that any betrayal or disappointment or even loss of them wouldn't actually affect me.

Ouch.

I have a feeling that when Jesus said he came to bring life abundant, some of that had to do with fully embracing the gifts of those loving humans in my life. And when you find it hard to even fully accept God's radical love for you so much of the time, you certainly aren't going to trust people.

Fear. Fear is so powerful, my friends. And that's really what it comes down to.

Brene's first step to belonging is to "move in." There is so much rage and separating and vilifying in our society these days. People say things they would never say to someone if they were actually face to face through social media. We've lost touch with the art of disagreeing. With civility. With productive debate. With researching to find the actual truth.

And I see the effect it has on me. The propensity towards pigeonholing, towards assumptions, towards anger. To believe I am right and others wrong all the time.

We all do it.

And it's killing us, friends. It. Is. Killing. Us.

So for Lent, I'm "moving in" and clicking off. I will check in my with groups online and organize events and post blogs - but when tempted to click to fill that void of belonging, when tempted to scroll to cure loneliness (if only for a moment), I'm going to choose one of the following instead:

(1) Write a letter to a friend. An actual pen to paper, lick a stamp and leave it on my table for a week because I hate going to the post office letter. 

(2) Call someone on the phone. And fight really hard while it is ringing against my hope that they won't pick up. (Seriously, I need help.)

(3) Initiate a crazy game of chase with my kids that ends in a tackling, tickling mess of limbs and chaos because even though I hate being touched, my kids love it.

(4) Pick up a real book that challenges me to love better. To move in. To listen. 

(5) Write. A blog. A book. A quick text of encouragement. But write. Dream.

(6) Bake something for a neighbor. (Friends, this will be no easy thing cause this lady will need to learn to bake to actually do this one.)

(7) Text a prayer or word of encouragement to one of my pastors.

(8) Dance. (Ok, this may seem unrelated to what I am trying to do but those who know KNOW. This is 100% a support to doing away with fear. Anyone want to make me a new playlist?) 

(9) Organize an actual outing and invite humans to come with me. (Keep watch for this friends - maybe we can hang out IN PERSON!!!)

(10) Make coffee and find a neighbor with whom to share it.

Bottom line, and in the immortal words of Phoebe, I am going to be with the "3-dimensional people." I am going to "move in." I'm going to fight the loneliness by fighting the fear. I am going to resist the parts of me that shut down, that hide, that run away and pray like crazy that Jesus will help when I fall and fail.

And I will fall and fail. It's inevitable.

But I'm going to be with my people and find more people who need people. I'm going to keep fighting for the things I am passionate about, but I'm going to do it in person. I am going to keep radically finding ways to unashamedly be me and call others to do the same. Because I believe we can always get better, do better, know better, be better. We're never finished.

I'm going to fight fear with faith and risk. And win.

The Village

Today was opening day for our neighborhood pool.

I watched as my oldest laughed and jumped and swam and raced with all these amazing young people that he didn't know a year ago.

I chatted and laughed with kind and funny people, women and men I know call neighbors and friends. I walked around the outside of the pool with a friend so she could get her "steps" in and, at the same time, spy on her teenage kids. (Shh.)

They helped me laugh off the fact that earlier in the day, within just one short hour of the summer officially starting, I had to wrestle a screaming, kicking toddler and three bags on the long walk of shame from the kiddie pool to the parking lot. One hour was all it took for us to bless the neighborhood with our very special (and ear-splitting) brand of chaos.

Last year I would have left the pool, lonely and dejected and embarrassed, vowing never to come back again. (And then my husband would have eventually talked me into trying again.)

But here's the difference this summer.

This summer I know we are surrounded by people who have been there. Who know us. Who aren't secretly judging us in their heads and saying things behind their hands like "that kid just needs a good spanking, look how he acts in public!" Who remember (and share about) their own times racing from the pool to the car with their own unhinged toddlers in their arms.

Friends.

This time last year I was struggling hard with the reality of moving back to Richmond.  Fearful, really, that we would make the same poor choices we made last time around. That we would overschedule our lives. Hide the true realities of our days. That the painful way we left it last time around would follow us right back and set up shop shop in our home as an unescapable anxiety.

But it hasn't. God is so good.

Yes, we had a slow start last summer.  A lonely first two months here. Tears before bed. Isolation in our chaos. There are few things harder than watching your normally joyful child struggle deeply with sadness and know that you have been the cause.

But then school happened. Neighbors came outside. We took a risk and skipped right past the painful small talk and just got to know each other. No hiding. Our kids became friends. My oldest found some besties. My younger ones found some teenagers to hero worship, boys who actually knock on the door and ask to play with our toddlers. Friends who drop everything when you call and say "we need you to come grab the boys" as your younger one is having  a seizure. Who clean your house and watch your kids and fill your fridge so you can keep going when you come home from the hospital.

I found friends to pray with, who see our boys as beautiful and precious and children created in the image of God who I know will fight with every ounce of their being alongside of us to make our schools and neighborhoods and churches better and safer places in which to raise our black sons.

We have found something so, so precious here.

This time last year I wrote this:

"Most of all, I hope as I continue to untangle and forgive myself and move forward, that we can start

fresh as a family. 10 years later. 2 more pets. 2 more children. 2 more sets of goodbyes under our belts. We have changed and so has RVA.

Ready or not, here we come."

I can honestly say that one year later, I feel like we've been able to do this. To start fresh. To be who we are in this place, in all our chaotic, loud glory. There ain't no hiding it, anyway. We've found that most amazing of things: a real community of friends who treats us like family even when our kids are losing it, when we haven't showered, when the stress is too much. Who helps us get back up after a tough day. Who lets us love on their kids like our own.

Who helps us to laugh at what life throws at us and keep going.

So today, as I watched my son with eyes glowing and smile so wide, and as I sat next to these amazing new friends, I felt overwhelmed. With gratefulness, with hope and with joy.

And with the knowledge that this village has been a part of my healing in ways I never could have expected.

Texting the Ridiculous

We all have them. Or we should.

Those friends to whom we can text something totally ridiculous out of the blue, right in the middle of our most chaotic moments, and know we are heard and understood.

For me, I know those friends are likely laughing at me or with me. They are writing something equally ridiculous right back. They are sending dumb pictures of stupid injuries or of a child drinking from a puddle in the street or of another failed meal prep. They are texting while they reheat their cup of coffee for the seventh time. Sometimes they are texting about how they just cried, too. Or about how they miss working outside the home. Or how, just for one minute, they'd love to pee without someone watching.

In it together.

Ideally, these friends would be right in the room and we could do this face-to-face. But that's not reality. Some of them live right around the corner, others across the country. Some I've known for decades and others for months.

But they are there. Here. In it.

I am not a techie person. But, in a way, during this season of being home, a choice I never thought I'd make and one with which I struggle daily, these texts have saved my life.

In the moments when I feel the most alone, the most likely to lose heart, I can say a prayer, press a few buttons and have a friend saying "God has got this, take a deep breath, laugh at yourself, order a pizza, tomorrow's a new day." I can take heart knowing that I am just one of so many mamas in the trenches.

And I cannot express how grateful I am.

Grateful that these are people in my life who get it. Grateful that they don't reply with cliches or tell me I'm complaining. (Unless they really SHOULD tell me I'm complaining and to suck it up for goodness sake. Because I need that sometimes, too.) Grateful for honest, simple interactions that ground me during a phase where my children's needs keep me isolated a lot of the day, especially during the winter with my cold-hating babies.

I know one day we probably won't text as often. And the texts won't include pictures of my infant attempting to drink from the toilet. Maybe we'll live closer and talk over a glass of wine while our kids are old enough to play without needing minute-to-minute intervention.

I don't know.

For now, I'm glad for the few, the crazy, the text-buddies. You know who you are. Love you.

The Follow-Through

Three times it has happened.

Three times we have met a new neighbor, a boy just my oldest son's age.

Three times we have been told that that boy would come knocking to play at a specific time.

Three times my son has woken up, gotten dressed, cheerfully done all his chores and waited for a potential new friend to knock.

Zero times has that boy shown up.

As a parent, there are fewer things more difficult than watching your child be sad. Almost two months ago, we took my son from all that he knew. A school he loved, a friendly neighborhood, best friends in the backyard, a fantastic soccer team, a church where he was learning to worship with other kids in a multi-generational setting.

And for two months I have watched him try to be brave. To smile for us, to help with his brothers, to power-wash our fence and help unpack the truck. To set up his room just the right way and patiently earn his way to new roller blades through doing extra chores. To find him sobbing in his room, wishing he were still in Wisconsin, unwilling to admit that he's probably mad at what we've done to him. Hurting.

And when these possibilities of friends, of humans his age living so close are dangled in front of him, I see his hopes rise. I see his step lighten.

When they don't show?

I see him crushed again. And in that disappointment, all the things he misses come rushing back in on him. The pain becomes even more acute. The homesickness grows.

I can't do much here. I can play with him and take him on special outings for taboo foods we can no longer keep in the house because of his brother's issues. I can teach him how to pray through this pain, how to invite God into it. I can do all this.

But I cannot be a nine year-old boy.

And what he needs is a friend.

So, I sit here and type as he plays legos alone and his brothers sleep. I asked if I could play but he wanted to be alone. I don't know how to get our neighbors to follow through. Today, after the disappointment, I marched him over to knock on their door. No one was home. Not once has anyone given us an explanation for the no-shows.

If there is one thing I have learned about my oldest it is that he never forgets anything. A promise, a casual comment, a word. They stick. If someone says he will give him a present, he asks every day for months if it has come in the mail. If someone says he will write, he asks me to check the mailbox all day long. If someone says she will come over, he waits by the door.

He trusts that people will do what they say they will do.

And I am so afraid that the more this happens, the more his nature is going to change. That he won't believe what people say. That he will have trouble letting new people into his life.

I don't know why that boy and his mama didn't come over this morning. I don't know why the other ones didn't come last week. I don't want to pass any judgments. There could have been an emergency. She doesn't have my number to call and let me know what's going on. Maybe she just forgot or decided it was inconvenient to stop what she was doing and go hang with the lonely neighbors. I don't know.

But man, I hate feeling helpless and I hate watching him let down. Again. And knowing that I, too, am capable of this failure, have not always followed through. Have not always been true to my word. Have flung promises carelessly at times. Have inflicted my own share of pain.

I cannot shelter him from the disappointments. I can only teach him to cling to the One who doesn't disappoint.  In fact, I know deep down that he has to experience this to truly be human, to develop empathy, to learn about the importance of his own follow-through. Of doing what he says he will do and speaking truth and life to the people in his life.

Friends, I don't know if you have children in your life. But I know we all have humans in our lives. And I know that as humans we crave to be able to trust, we desire to be sought after, to be followed-up. To be shown we matter.

Being people who say what they mean and do what they say has no small impact on the world. Following through on what we say is just one gift we can give to each other, one way we can be lovely in a world filled with so much unlovely.

Let's just be that, shall we?

Lonely Guy Checks In

It's funny what being embarrassingly honest can get you these days.

And by "funny," I mean "awesome."

Just last week I posted about being lonely, about how this phase of life, of being a stay-at-home parent, of rising each day and knowing that my primary companion for the day is more likely to pee on me than give me a good conversation, is a lonely place. And it was easy before I posted it to feel like that loneliness was something I was suffering, well, alone. That all the other parents out there were happily trucking along with some dear companions, sipping coffee and laughing at their children's tantrums together.

Myriads of responses later, however, the truth became apparent. This is a tough and lonely gig, people. For those of us, particularly, who may have had a job or career we loved or who never imagined staying at home past maternity leave, this may be the hardest and most isolating experience of our lives so far. (Let's leave middle school out of the reckoning for that title, shall we?)

Within minutes of posting, I saw other parents admit to being in the same place. Not only feeling lonely, but yearning for deep friendship, for the type of friendship that is comfortable, that requires no preparation beforehand. No personal grooming or domestic tidying. No kid in the perfect and sweet mood. And the funny thing is- I think we often think other people need us to put on that show that happens at the beginning of friendships. The small talk, the clean house, the perfect snacks and the deodorant. But really? I think very few of us actually care about that stuff, particuarly if not worrying about it makes it much easier for real relationship, honest interaction and easy camaraderie to be found.

So why do we make it so hard on ourselves? Why do we think we need to play a certain game here that, if we're honest, is just too exhausting to play?

I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that my week turned out very differently than I had imagined it would when I pressed the "publish" button on that post. Lovely texts and sweet messages and encouraging verses and invitations to hang out poured forth. I had a wonderful dinner with a newer friend and a fantastic night going deeper with some women I've known for a year now but still don't know as well as I'd like. I had a morning with two newer friends from church where our kids played long enough for us to actually say more than one sentence in a row a few times. I felt surrounded on Sunday by wonderful community as we baptized our sweet little man. Miracles do happen, friends.

Did I have that "person" come magically out of the blue? Of course not. That takes work, it takes patience, it takes putting myself out there- work I am trying to do. I did strike up two conversations with strangers at the library and the Y and get far enough to exchange names. I did laugh with new friends. I did feel like something could possibly change.

Bottom line, I hoped.

Hope is a pretty powerful thing.

Nate's tantrums didn't stop at the end of the week. It didn't get any easier on that front. But the thought of those texts, those calls, those invitations...well, it made the tantrums a little easier to bear. And the laughter I experienced at night with those new friends? Well, laughter is powerful, too. And its remnants can last long enough to get me through some of those tough mornings that follow.

So to those of you who joined in the conversation in honest and painful solidarity, I feel your pain and pray for hopeful moments for you this week even as I hope for more of my own. To those who texted or called or just made it clear that I can text or call you if I need to, thank you for reaching out to "lonely guy." To those with whom I laughed and talked, thank you for giving me what I needed to make it through the week feeling like I wasn't alone in this. To those I overlooked because of my own shyness or pain or isolation, I apologize and pray that my eyes would be clearer this coming week and that I would remember strongly that most of us really do yearn for something real and good and deep and are waiting for someone to extend the invitation.

Friends, let's be people this week who see those around us, who long to extend God's love and our friendship to them and who are open to what kind of laughter and magic might happen as a result.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

If you were born in the late 70's or early 80's, chances are you remember the theme song to "Cheers." You may have never even seen the actual show, but if you hear those first few notes you know what's coming and can eagerly sing those sweet words..."you wanna go where everybody knows your name, do do do do do!" It's a song I've thought about a lot, especially over this past year, as I've navigated being in a location where very few people actually know my name and fewer still know what makes up who I actually am.

So, as I found myself hurtling north on 95 this past weekend toward my annual college roommate reunion, I found myself more eager than I think I've ever been before to see these women, and that's saying a lot. Just to be somewhere for one whole weekend with a group of people who essentially grew up with me in college, who know my thoughts, my hopes, my fears, who can make me laugh so hard I think my face is going to fall off...to really be a place where I am truly known. And to know that even as I am truly known in all my good and in all those places of mine still at work, that I am recklessly loved. It felt like coming home.

You see, I've really been blessed in my life. I have amazing friends from growing up, friends who I still see and talk to and who are still in my business on a regular basis. I have incredible friends from college, who when we get together don't just reminisce about the old times but continue to make new, priceless memories together. God, in his infinite and beautiful wisdom, knows how much I need other people. Why? So that I'm not alone when I laugh and so that there's always a shoulder on which to cry. So that when I'm crazy and overwhelmed there are people to talk me down and when I am weary they are there to carry me through. To give me the opportunity to love fiercely and well and to take myself less seriously than I often do.

So, here's to my wonderful hoohah ladies Caitlin, Norah, Samantha and Rachel. To seven amazing hoohah weekends filled with crepes, laughter, wide-brimmed pink hats and consequent bold stares from passersby, long walks, dance parties, road trips, festivals, awesome cities, tears, beautiful green parks and long talks while sitting in them, aging aches and pains, 80's music, homemade oreos, too many pictures to count, spooning, Dr. Caitlin's diagnoses, multiple crazy and sweet babies who've come along for the ride and been officially inducted into the hoohah fray, understanding husbands who know how important this weekend is and, secretly, wish they could be a part of it and, most of all, to many more weekends filled with memories.

I am so thankful to have that place where everybody knows my name. To know and be known is one of the greatest gifts of life. Thanks ladies.

May the hoohah live forever. Amen.