So THAT'S what friends are for...

One of the things I have been working on so hard for a while now is making connections. You would think it would be easy for me right? After all, I put all of these personal details about my life out to the world, I can talk a mile a minute, I'm outgoing, and I'm brave. And yes I am all those things, but I am also lonely. And I've been that way for 32 years.


I didn't hear the things God was telling me about making connections and having friends until my counselor and my church and my friends started making it all clear.

We need connections! God made Eve for Adam and God exists as the Trinity. We are never supposed to be alone! And God.. how I didn't know that!!

How I tried so hard to do everything by myself! I didn't ask for help, didn't need help, didn't want help. Except I did.

I used to think everything had to be perfect or else not at all. I thought if a relationship wasn't strong and solid with no hurt feelings and no miscommunication and only good times, then it wasn't a relationship worth having at all. If someone hurt my feelings, I was out. If someone made me feel too good, I was out. If someone was inconsistent or didn't call when she said she would call, or messed up a few too many times, I thought we couldn't be friends.

But I was wrong. And when I adopted two of the most beautiful, intelligent, wonderful, funny, loving, and DIFFICULT children.... God finally made me see. By giving me something, someONE....TWO SOMEONES that I just couldn't give up on, God made me see that relationships were worth fighting for. Friends are worth having.

I do not have one single friend from high school that I still talk to on a regular basis. I don't have sorority sisters who call me and ask me to go to dinner or to go on girl's weekends. I don't have a childhood friend who, though we haven't talked in years, makes me feel like we were never apart. I don't have any of that. And I never knew what I was missing.

What I do have are new friends. And new feelings. And the realization, this from my counselor, that "doing life" is messy. It hurts and it feels good. It can be messed up and twisted and inside out and upside down, but it IS. It is life and it is connection and it is God working through others and it is gentleness and goodness and imperfection. And where have I been for 32 years? How did I not know this?

What made me think that I could do this alone? What made me think that every time something became hard or imperfect, it was time for me to throw in the towel?

I feel like an idiot.




I can't believe I spent 32 years thinking I didn't need friends. Thinking that it was too hard to cultivate a relationship and WAY TOO HARD to find one that lasts.

But as one of my new friends has told me: "Some people spend their whole lives and never figure this out!" And as another new friend has told me, after I apologize for talking her ear off about something I'm stressed about: "That's what friends are for." And I have another friend who is proud enough of me to tell other people about my blog. And another who asked me if I needed to borrow money. And another who told me about something awful she has had to endure. And another who just said..."Amen sister."

And I'm finding out that friends are nice. And I need them. I even need the critism and the hurt. And I'm sorry to all the special people I've had in my life during the years when I just thought that I didn't.

...during the years when I thought if you hurt my feelings that meant you didn't care about me. And when I thought if you forgot to call me it meant you didn't want to be with me. And when I thought that if you said something I didn't want to hear it meant you didn't like the person I was.

I'm sorry. I have missed out on some GREAT friendships. I see now all of the trips I've missed and baby showers I didn't go to and husbands I have never met. And I'm sorry to all of my old friends for bailing out on the times we've had together. I know that I hurt you, but I want you to know....I hurt me more.

And through this blog, I've started to shed the pain. And through this blog, I've started to make some friends. And after this blog, damn it, I'm going to keep some friends. Because now I know.


I need you. And I want to share all of the experiences I have with someone else. I don't want to be alone anymore.