Hi, I'm new here.

 

A few months ago, our family relocated from small town Iowa to Big City Arkansas. We left behind where our marriage began 18 years ago. We also left behind my mother in law, our friends, our church, our community. We moved to be closer to family and a new job for my husband. 3 months in and its finally starting to feel like we live here and not like we're on an extended vacation. 

Today a new friend, and I think I can safely call her that, invited me to a women’s conference their church is putting on next weekend. I want to go because I know that I NEED to go. I need to make efforts to make friendships and build relationships here. I just never realized how much I loved how easy it was in Iowa. It was easy because we had been a part of our church for 18 years, we were solid there. It was easy because I had been homeschooling for 9 years. Most of the moms I knew and they liked me. I was now a “veteran”. I didn’t have to be the new mom anymore. It was easy because we had lived in small town Iowa for 17 years, the community knew us.

And here we are. I’m the new – everything. New woman. New mom. New to the area. I don’t even know where things are, let alone know the people at them. The woman I’m going to go to this conference with, and the other women going, they hardly know me at all. Oof how I just want to fit. I just want to not be new.

But I’ve been made aware. There have been many times in my past when I haven’t gone up to the new person and talked to them. Maybe because that day my anxiety was high, and I couldn’t manage the courage to talk to someone new. Maybe because I wanted to be cool and look like I fit, so I made myself fit so well I didn’t have room for the new person. Maybe because I thought the new person really wouldn’t like me or want what I have to offer as a person in friendship or at all. Maybe because I thought talking to them might be committing to a whole friendship and my plate felt full. Whatever my reason may have been for avoiding someone who was new and stood out as such, I feel it now.

 I feel new.

How badly I want SOMEONE, anyone, to say hello, ask about my kids, find out why we’re new. Even if its just so I don’t have to sit at a table with my kids and wonder if everyone here feels as lonely as I do.

I know, friendships are coming. In the meantime, relationships have to be built.