Truth for the Trenches

    I am finding that I am in a new season of cultivating relationships. Continuing to foster life-long friendships, repair some, let go of others and create new ones. I had expectations of living next door to my best friends as we raised kids together. Cooking out on weekends as family, girl weekends to the beach and our kids becoming best friends as well. As I find this to not be my reality I’m finding it hard to picture what place friendships hold in this season of life. I am surrounded by 3 little people all day who need and want my undivided attention making play dates difficult for me and more of a parenting exercise in kid socialization than coffee with a friend for me. I moved away from 30 year friendships and there is no replacement from that. I was pregnant or nursing for the past 5 years and that put challenges on friendships. Life happened and friends moved away or choices drew us apart. But what I was so lovingly reminded of by my husband is that as great as

These walls need painting, they need new plaster and pictures hung. But, inside these walls hold echoing laughter, squeals of delight from 3 small kids. These walls have seen games of hide and seek, kids jumping out to surprise daddy’s homecoming, new siblings brought home, a family being formed. They have held secrets of tears, hurt feelings, loneliness and heartbreak. These walls are ours. They form our home. Our home to raise children, to love children, to fight for reconciliation with each other regularly. This home is not perfect. It is old, crumbling and in need of life. But, I am too. I need life and I am called to give life to others. To invite them into these walls. To sit around the table in the room with orange walls. To make pancakes and sing birthday songs in the room with beige walls. To bathe squishy new babies in the room with pink rose tile. It is not the color of the walls that makes the home.   As my husband holds our almost 2 year old “eating his belly butt