Thursday, June 3, 2010

Community

It's Tuesday and I am still on a high from the weekend. Don't you love it when your weekend is so relaxing that by Tuesday you still feel refreshed?! I took last Friday off from work and slept in, drank coffee (one of my vices), worked out and then went to an event with David and the other field travelers and their wives. It was an event to celebrate the past year's service excellence for the dealers, so I got to meet a lot of the contacts that David works with on a daily basis. I also caught up with the other wives, met one of the guys' new girlfriends (she was super adorable and sweet) and ate this yummified shrimp pasta. And who can complain, who doesn't love a free cocktail party and an excuse to wear heels?!

I crave community. Community with friends, with God, at work, with my church. I am still in the process of building this here. As a field traveler's wife I feel like I do belong to a community, but that particular community is centered around my husband's job-- and job's come and go (hopefully it's here to stay for a while in this economy!). I crave the kind of community you share life with-- people you are silly and fun with but can be serious and possibly cry with. People you go grocery shopping with and out on the town with, people you have over for dinner and are okay with eating leftovers. The kind of people that are family without necessarily being from the same blood. I experienced this when I was in college. As a part of the swim team at Florida State, I was surrounded by a close group that did everything together. Amy Lo is still one of my best bosom friends that I talk to weekly. Those people were my family and we shared experiences that no one else will ever "get" or understand. Like I'm sure the term "RFOC" or "Greatest guy in the world" or "taste of heaven" doesn't mean anything to the next person, but it means the world to those of us who shared our every moment together swimming and sleeping and eating and goofing off. We were a tight knit group that trained, ate, slept, laughed, screamed mad and got super silly with each other all day every day. After college it's different. It's not as convenient to hang out when everyone has jobs or boyfriends/husbands and then before you know it start having kids. You have to put effort into your friendships or they begin to slowly fade away, and then suddenly the group of amazing besties that you shared life with for 4 years is all over the globe and facebook is the only way you keep in touch (I love facebook, but it's not my idea of real community). It becomes more of a challenge to get out and meet new people and stretch outside our little box. I don't want to be like this. I want to feel uncomfortable and slightly out of place, because that means I'm expanding my ideals, reaching out to new people. I want my home to be a warm, fun place to be real with each other. That is what community means to me.

Since David and I moved to Portland, we have slowly been able to build community here with new friends. Ricky and Krista, Ryan and Stephanie, Tony and Sarah, those people are a huge part of our community here. I think it's hard for a woman (or anyone for that matter) to move to a new spot and find a new bestie, a ta-da friend who just "clicks" and immediately is a bosom friend. Krista is this friend to me. Actually Krista and I are crazily similar. When we moved up here, Krista and her husband Ricky were the first real non-field-traveler friends we met. Now she is one of my closest friends. I want to be more like her, really. She is super fun, incredibly organized (who carries around a label maker in their purse?) and just a happy person. She loves God and really tries to serve her husband and the other people around her. It's just so easy to be around her. Don't you love those kind of friends that you feel like you can just sit and be, and it's always normal, interesting and you don't have to fill the air with small talk? Last week we made a quiche because we wanted to be French and feel like Julia Child. It bubbled over and the oven started smoking, so we opened the windows and the oven, which caused the quiche to take an extra hour to set. At 9:00 we were finally eating our masterpiece. I am so glad I have a friend like Krista who enjoys eating quiche admist smoke-- and feels that it adds character to the whole experience of French cuisine. :) These kind of friendships are priceless, and her friendship has made me believe that I can have the kind of community I thought I'd never have again. Yay for new friendship!

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