Together-ness: Who Are You LIVING With?
As life rolls along around us, I wanted to pause today and ask a simple question:
WHO ARE YOU LIVING WITH?
And by living, I don’t mean shacking up with, or married to, or sharing a roof with.
I mean LIVING. Doing life.
Who do you pursue fun with?
Who do you chase after God with?
Who do you paint pictures with?
Who do you break bread with?
Who do you write songs with?
Who do you devour Scripture with?
Who do you worship our Creator with?
Who do you defend the defenseless with?
Who do you exercise with?
Who do you cook dinner with?
Who do you share the Gospel with?
Who do you share bedtime stories with?
Who do you listen to music with?
Together-ness
Who do you SHARE with?
Who do you EXPERIENCE with?
Who do you JOURNEY with?
Who do you ADVENTURE with?
WHO DO YOU LIVE WITH?
That’s not really an EASY question.
We’re in a season of life where, with 4 kids ages 8 and under .. most of our “togetherness” is as a family. Truth be told (maybe it has nothing to do with having a big family, maybe it’s me, or my wife, or both of our personalities?) … we seldom get invited or asked to be “social” with any of our friends. I usually write it off as “well, they know if they invite us, they have a huge, rowdy family to contend with”. Sometimes, it’s disappointing. Usually, if we’re going to be doing life together with other people (excluding my brother-in-law and his family here locally), it’s because we initiate it.
That being said, I live a lot of “life” online … and you and I have both heard the people say “oh, those relationships aren’t real”, but you and I know differently. I can say when I met a bunch of these “blog buddies” at re:create this year, it was as if we’d known each other for years. I’d just assume have them all come down to SSI for a weekend as anyone.
I have made some really close friendships with some of the people at our church that I cherish. Those have to some extent replaces close friendships we had at our last church, but that is mostly due to distance.
It’s a hard question b/c I don’t have the most outgoing personality – Eric & I call ourselves trolls (and really mean it) b/c we can be quite happy staying home with just the girls and not spending time with others, but I am learning that God has called us to live life with others. It is made harder by the fact that Eric’s work schedule is crazy, and he commutes 45 min. away so he rarely gets a chance to spend time with us, much less others.
Much like Fred, I am finding that I am able to make friends with people that live hundreds of miles away as well. Those friendships can be very close as well, and I am enjoying building those new friendships as well.
It’s something that I’ve been working on for the past few months, and I have come to appreciate that time spent with others (even if my husband doesn’t!)
I would like the opportunity to live life with friends. No one likes kids.
@Brian, maybe you and Fred should get together! Ha just kidding! I do know that being in a different life phase does have a huge impact on the “ease” of interconnectivity.
I think the challenge then is trying to be proactive in finding others who are in the same life phase. Easier said than done, I know.
Being childless for the moment, and living thousands of miles from family (even the Aussie family is thousands of miles, let alone the Irish family…), church has been our family, who we do life (etc) with.
And sometimes that has been very hard, especially since our church is full of very family oriented cultures who therefore spend all their time with their own blood families, meaning very little for us. Diane has maintained an online community presence much more closely than I did for years (after we met online), but while I was unemployed last year, I realised online was somewhere God wanted me to be…and the community we’ve both become part of has enriched our offline relationships and how we do life.
I didn’t see that coming for a moment. I’m looking forward to seeing where it takes us.
Dang. Beautifully hard questions, Russ. I feel like I live in three worlds right now. The New England seminary world. The Southeast Georgia church world, and the online social media world. Where am I? I think once I figure that out, I’ll know who I live with…