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.

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.

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!)

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.