Thankful

I had to report for jury duty last week and as luck would have it I got selected as a juror for a case that lasted FIVE days long.  I was frustrated, annoyed, and slightly panicky wondering what I would do for childcare for so many days as we have never needed someone to watch the kids after school since I was at home.  For the first day I had my husband take a half day off and watch the kids until I came home, but I knew that I couldn’t ask him to do this for the whole week.

So I leaned on the kindness of friends and neighbors to help me.  And after the long week was over I looked back and was awed and overcome with thankfulness of the help and hospitality of those that came so willingly to help.  For a while I had been complaining and discouraged at the fact that I couldn’t find community after living in this area for over ten years.  I was expecting my community to look a specific way here, the same as how it looked in my childhood when I was growing up in the suburbs of DE.  It was only after this past week that I realized I do have real community here and I was just looking for it in all the wrong places when it had been here all along.  I have failed to see just how much God has blessed me with such loyal and caring friends and neighbors who picked up my kids after school, watched my kids, fed my kids, and gave up their afternoons just to care for them while I was at jury duty.  I reached out for help and these friends did not even hesitate to respond and help me out.  And now I can see just how much I care and depend on their friendships not just for this but for being able to share my life with them over the months and years.  And for that I am so very very thankful.

Moving

I want to move.  To the suburbs. But like all my choice and decision making it is filled with conflicting thoughts.
We have been here in LA for the past ten years and our friends and church community are all here. Our son goes to a great elementary school and we live in a neighborhood where all the kids walk to school together. Now that our youngest is 3, life is suddenly much more manageable. I feel like I am coming out of my introverted shell and we are able to enjoy hanging out with friends and hosting people and not be completely wiped out by the end of the day. Our small group is like our extended family, I feel like we are reconnecting into the family ministries again, and our church is finally getting it’s own building after 10 years. We also worry that life in the suburbs of OC will be too sheltered for our kids (not that we are slumming it up here in West LA) and that we will get too caught up in the academic competitiveness of the schools there.
As I write all this out life seems pretty perfect where we are and there doesn’t seem to be much reason for us to move anywhere let alone the suburbs. But, my parents live in OC and the pull of wanting to live near them is very big. I am the first to admit that I am extremely spoiled by my parents. They help us with groceries, they help watch the kids when I have appointments or am feeling sick, and M even notices how much happier my demeanor is when we are down here with them. Yes, they are invaluable to me and my kids but also as my parents get older I want to be near to help them out as well and let them know how much I appreciate them. I talk to my mom at least twice a day and she is pretty much the only person that calls me on my phone. My kids love being with my parents and my oldest even says he would like to live next door them (to which my parents say, no thanks, thats too close). Heck, maybe to round out our suburban life we could even get a dog which my family has been dying to get for the past 6-12 months.
I’m sure I would love living in suburbia but then I think to myself is a comfortable suburban life really what I want long term for myself and my kids? Will I get too swept up in living a Pleasantville life and all the luxuries it has to offer and insulate my family from the rest of the world? I can already see it happening where we are right now because I am so easily influenced by the environment around me, how much more so if we move?
My husband just gives me his look and tells me how complicated I am…

Friendships

In recent months I have really been thinking a lot about my friendships here in LA and how much I yearn for constancy in my friendships and to fit in somewhere. Our church is somehow very segregated in our family groups and the singles groups. Several years back M and I felt like we really wanted to bridge that gap of not knowing very many single people in our church and were very intent on getting more involved in things other than the families ministry. It is now a few years later and I feel like we are straddling these two groups but not quite having that deeper community of friends in either group. Our church is also a fairly transient church and so a lot of the old friends and families we were close with are no longer there.

I often think back to my childhood in DE and the 5-6 families we saw every Friday night gather at our house for bible study and how these friendships with the parents and the kids were so tightly knit together. We were all great friends and it was a very intimate community of families that would always gather for all the major holidays and go on trips together. Now that I am a parent I find myself really wanting that not only for my kids but for myself as well. We have pockets of friends from our years here in LA and they are great friends but I guess what I miss is the set of constant, stable, steady friends and families that will hang out together after meetings and bible studies are over and see what’s going on on the weekends and plan camping trips together. I sometimes wonder if this happens more easily in suburbia and it makes me lean towards moving to an area where the people are less transient, the air feels cleaner, and the parking lots are spacious.

While I don’t think wanting a community of families and deeper friendships is bad in it of itself I feel that God has been teaching me that it is too much of an obsession of mine. Of wanting all the comforts and luxuries of a Pleasantville life. I’ve been so focused on me and what I want and coveting all these things that I am losing some perspective on who God is in my life. I’ve been trying to do a personal study on getting back to the basics of who God is and my fear of man but to be honest it is going nowhere. But despite it all He has been showing me that my time here in LA and the relationships we have made has not been wasted. We have been a blessing to others and we have most certainly been blessed by them as well.

And as I crawl out of my introverted shell and take intiative in striking up new friendships and reconnecting with old I know God is working in my life and giving me a new perspective that this life is not about me but about Him.