Christian by Association

Married life was good. Better than I realized it could be, really. I had found something rare, something special, and by grace we both realized it. Baby was on his way. School was finished. There was no pressure to get a job and use my “education”, yet I had it to fall back on. An ideal plan, but something was missing.

There, in the deepest recesses of my soul I was screaming, “God, send me a friend. A real one.”

It seemed hopeless. I turned to different circles, but I didn’t seem to fit anywhere. Wrong age. Wrong phase of life. Wrong views. Wrong church. Wrong shape. For one reason or another, I always found myself on the outside staring in. And longing for a place.



Baby came. Oh, the joy he brought. Words cannot describe. We discovered, for the first time, the weight and depth of God’s mercy. So much that we did not deserve. Our love for one another grew to new heights, as we marveled at what it had produced. My heart began to beat faster and fuller. For the first time the void labeled "family" was full and as it should be. But still, something was missing.

There were bad days that came. Days when motherhood seemed more a curse than a blessing. Days, many in fact, when I felt like a crazy person. Inadequate and uncertain. Hope seemed lost somewhere in the sleepless nights. It was then that I was screaming, “My God, where is she?”

A vacancy lay in my heart that no existing relationship could touch. Husband filled his role, above and beyond all expectation. Baby was all I dreamed he would be. Yet the longing remained. For someone, any someone, who shared my perspective. Someone who wore my shoes: wife shoes, mom shoes, post-partum woman shoes, hormonal, frazzled, and trying to survive shoes. Someone who loved me, my family, and my marriage. Someone who would push when I needed a push, speak when I needed a voice, and, on occasion, sit beside me and cry a good cry.

And then, slowly, inch by inch, it began. A drawing in. Hearts began to synchronize. Relationships began to form: molding where they could not fit, stretching where they should have snapped, bending where they should have broken. Some were pre-existing, but began to sink and shift from the surface to the depths. From acquaintance level, to something more. Something kindred. Others were altogether new, and even surprising. Truly works of God and Spirit.

So gradual was this process that I nearly missed it. It was a while before I stopped and realized that something—that missing something—was found. Several somethings in fact.

These women. Looking back, it’s difficult to pinpoint when it all began. The “how” is an even greater mystery. Yet somehow, someway, I awoke one day with friends. Real ones. The kind that embrace it all, and love in spite of. In spite of life. In spite of messy, busy, sometimes ugly, inconvenient, unpredictable life.

The kind that speak truth so steeped in love that it dulls the sting.

When the bad days come, and hope and peace are just beyond my grasp, that’s when these women are in full swing. Into my messy house they come and stand beside me. To the floor we stoop, side by side, to sort through the pieces and put them back together. Then to the axis, to set my world back into motion. All the while never ceasing to make me laugh. Sometimes we cry, sometimes we pray, sometimes we shake our fists in the air and shout, “Why!” But, somehow, in the end, we always laugh. 

They are with me in the valley, they are with me on the mountaintop.

They help me to breathe, to laugh, to cry, and to remember that I am one of many. This is not a show, I am not a character, there is no need to act. “You’re safe here, be real,” is there ever present invitation, and my hand is out to receive it before it has even left their lips.

I love these women. For their heart that beats in sync with mine. For their words that speak without fear. For their lives that come alongside mine, and show me, I am not alone.