There are not many things I expected or clearly wanted in a "potential husband." I didn't create this customized soul mate for myself in my head because I knew "the one" didn't exist. However, one of the few things I whole-heartedly (and still do) believed was that it was possible and it was okay to want my husband to be my best friend. And friendships don't just pop out of nowhere - they need to grow and mature if you nourish them and let them go through trials. That's how I concluded that if I were to enter a dating relationship (which, from my perspective, is for the purpose of working towards marriage), it would stem out of a solid and somewhat deep friendship I had with a brother in Christ.
And that's exactly what happened. But I think Nathan and I did a pretty good job making it clear while we were dating that we weren't going to be each other's entire world. We knew our significant other wasn't going to fill our emptiness, meet our every need, or make us never feel lonely again. Other people are very important to me. Friends and those in need were my top priority for most of my life, and a boy wasn't going to come in and mess that up. I've always needed and wanted different circles of friends, and because of this, I knew that that aspect of moving to Rochester was going to be difficult and that being married wouldn't be enough.
I don't have any friends here. I'd like to make some. The only problem is, I've practically forgotten how to make friends. During my college years I was more often than not surrounded by people I knew, and even if there were new friends to be made, I made them together with my home base of friends there with me. Nowadays I get shy or just don't open up as easily or quickly because it feels so new. And I don't have a solid base of friends to retreat to when new relationships don't quite hit it off the way I'd hoped.
This old feeling has returned where I feel like I'm barely hanging on to my relationships from back home. Ever since my college years I've always found it very difficult for me to develop my relationships with those who weren't within my immediately community. It becomes a nasty tug-of-war within myself because it takes a lot of work to develop my immediate community around me, and it takes a lot of work to develop the community I grew up with, and finding a balance is like walking through some thick, pitch-dark woods without a flashlight or anything else to survive the night with.
I want my friends and family back home to know how important they are to me and how much I want to be there for them, but I know that I can't be there for them the same way I could if I was living near them. Maybe it's been like this for a while or it's a long time coming, but the reality that I'm not going to be the first person anyone would call for help or advice has been sinking in. No one's going to expect me to comfort them through this difficult time they're going through and ask me to pray for them right now. I'm not going to be asked for my opinion about which color to paint their room or if they could borrow one of my dresses. No one's going to say, "I'm so glad you picked up your phone because I really needed to talk to you." I'm not going to be at the forefront of people's minds because the reality is that people are busy, I'm not in a dire situation (like a soldier or missionary serving overseas), and I'm not by myself. I'm married now.
Well, I got what I asked for: my husband is my best friend. It just never sunk in as to how, after gaining this best friend of a husband, moving to Rochester would be at the cost of so many other relationships. The rubber has begun to meet the road where I'm working through the losses of stepping out of a community that has loved me, encouraged me, and supported me for many, many years.
I've been thinking and blogging a lot lately about the concept of living a good story. And as I wrestle within the tensions of moving to the fringe of one community and what it means to move deeper into another, it forces me to think about the God I serve - the God who calls us to develop and steward community as we go to the places God leads us. The move to Rochester is a threshold I'm forced to make a decision about: I can either constantly look back over my shoulder at what could've or should've been, or I can look forward to the opportunities I have before me to live a better story. So I'm choosing to embrace the new stories and relationships God invites me to participate in and I'm looking forward to sharing these stories with those in both the community of my past and the community of my future.
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