Being a Priority

I've been really struggling with community lately.  I feel like I have an incredible community of family around with my sisters being my dearest of friends, my parents being so close and supportive and truly enjoying time with all of my in-laws and nieces and nephews.  As far as family goes, I am all set.  Life is good.

But community outside of family goes through it's ups and downs.  I feel like we had an amazing community when we lived in the Central Coast and made some great new friends as well as had old friends to do life with.  It was a simple and sweet life to start off our marriage.  After moving back to my hometown, we have lots of friends here, but they all seem to be separate.  Husband has his guy friends (all from different stages of life), I have my girlfriends (all from different stages of life), we have our couple friends (most are separate places or stages of life), and it's just a lot of juggling.  It's really hard to keep up the Silicon Valley lifestyle when you're also trying to make time for all of the people in your life that you love...especially, when they all require separate time together (since they don't all know each other).  It can be exhausting, but more importantly, it doesn't leave us feeling like we have true community sometimes.  Don't get me wrong, we love the friends we have around here, but sometimes we long for the simple, go-to, group of friends that we had when living down south.  There's something special about feeling like there's a group of you that all pray for each other, call each other, and need each other in our daily lives.

I miss that.

We had friends visit this weekend that are some of our nearest and dearest of friends that we got to know during our time on the Central Coast.  They have also moved out of the area, but our friendship has remained the same.  It's always so refreshing to me to spend time with people that make you feel like a priority in their lives.  We tend to do most of the visiting and travel to see friends, so the fact that they came to see us, made us feel really special and loved.  Friendships like these are worth all of the time and effort to keep.  I'm so thankful for them!

Plus, in just three weeks, we get to spend another weekend with this crew and another couple that we feel the exact same way about.  I can't wait for that time together in the mountains (now we're just praying for snow!).