Day Seven: Finding Friendships

Here's the deal with making friends: you kind of have to get involved in things to meet people (which is, incidentally, necessary in order to make friends).

Here's the deal with having four children, 4 and under: getting involved in things has an extra layer of impossibility.

"Why?" you ask.

Because I spend most of my days doing this:

And when I take the kids to the playground they take up the entire swing set, like this:

And that makes other moms hate me.

Kidding.

But seriously. I already wrote about the Bible study the kids and I went to that killed the twins' naps for the rest of the day. I met people, and that was great, but I'm not sure I should do a weekly sabotage of the little bit of sleep the twins are managing to get. Because in the friends versus sleep trade-off, I think sleep wins.

We've made it to church twice since we got here five weeks ago (teething twins, moving, E.R. visits, you know how it is). I know I'm not going to get involved with the music team here, and making it to Sunday School is pretty much impossible. I'm grateful that we get to be at church at all, even if we're juggling kids the whole time.

There's no squadron here for me to jump into. I'm not going to be anyone's key spouse. I can barely swing getting the housework done much less joining a book club in the evenings or going to a weekly work out class.

That's my reality. For right now. It's a season, and I am loving my kids and so glad to be home with them, but the conundrum of making friends without getting involved in things is real, people.

So that's when I find that when making friends, I no longer have any shame.

I walked over to my neighbor's house today, rang the door bell, and asked if she and her daughter wanted to join us at the playground. Guess what? They did.

Yesterday, I struck up a conversation with another woman at the playground. She was fun and friendly. I could've let that be that and hoped we ran into each other again, but I didn't. I told her I wanted to be friends and got her name and number. Guess what? She wasn't weirded out by it (I think). She was looking for friends too.

After Bruiser's E.R. trip, our chaplain's wife offered to bring us dinner. I could've turned her down and told her I had it under control (take out Chinese counts as under control, right?), but I didn't. And guess what? She makes really good lasagna, and it was really fun to see her when she brought our dinner by.

We are only here so long and I don't want to waste time when I could be building friendships that matter. Especially when I'm squeezing in friendships between laundry and lego dates. Sometimes that means looking a little desperate and forward on the front end, but I prefer to think of it as proactive and  friendly.

And friendly is always a good thing.

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Come read the rest of the series!