Starting Over

We have some very friendly neighbors and have already invited one little boy over to play with C, which was really important for my poor 4 year-old who has spent way too much time with grown-ups for the past couple of weeks! Another neighbor brought over a banana bread to welcome us to the neighborhood, and I’ve been flooded with information about mom’s groups that I can join in the fall. I feel very lucky to have moved into such a welcoming community, and I am excited for our family to hunker down and really invest in this community. Hopefully we’ll stay put for more than a couple of years this time! 

Yet in the midst of all of the friendly welcomes, I am feeling a bit nostalgic and lonely. Nostalgic for the friends and the home that we left, lonely because I don’t have any girlfriends to invite over for coffee at the last minute…And a bit daunted by the amount of energy, and a certain amount of vulnerability, that it takes to foster the types of friendships that I know I will eventually need! I feel a little bit like the new girl in school that I so often was during a childhood filled with moving around, except that the women here are much friendlier and more forgiving than the middle or high school girls were 🙂 In any case, let’s just hope that I don’t say anything really dumb and that if I do, I will quickly recover and no harm will be done 🙂

Praise God for the chance to start over, to form new routines and organize our home in new ways, and for the chance to rely solely on Him when daily tasks seem intimidating or overwhelming.