selfies, awkwardness, and friendship

Fact: I suck at selfies.

I looked at my instagram feed today and figure it’s roughly 2% selfies, and they’re all pretty awful.

But my friend Kat was moving and, since I don’t ever selfie, I don’t have any pictures of the two of us together. I wanted to remedy that. So this is what we have. A shadow over baby Lilly’s face and poor Kat has a tumor on her head that looks suspiciously like my dorky husband.

But actually, this picture is kind of perfect for us.

We met at church over babies. My third was brand new, her little boy was a bit older. We chatted now and then, became friends on facebook, she invited me to an in-person Jamberry nail party.

I don’t generally go to those, as my nail care routine consists mainly of clippers. But my husband happened to be out, and it seemed like a reasonable way to spend a no-Daddy Saturday, and anyway, I liked her. Sure! Let’s hang. I’ll take my (then) three little kids and pregnant self to your house!

Before leaving her house, I said something like, “I like you. We should hang out.” She was like, “Well, yeah, let’s do that.” So I’m like, “how’s about I come to your house on Monday?”

You guys. I invited myself to her house with my kids for dinner the day after tomorrow. I hardly even had time to pick this apart in my head while showering. (What? You don’t revisit conversations and berate yourself for your part while shaving your legs?) 

Come Monday night, I did it again. And for the entire rest of her husband’s deployment and my pregnancy, I invaded her chaos with my own pretty much weekly. (At one point last year, we had a pair of teenagers, one 5-year-old, one 4, one 3, 2, 1, and 0. Crazy town.) Amazingly, she was down with it.

As I type it, I am aware this isn’t the strategy I’d advise when making new friends. But I’m so glad it happened. I’m so glad I was awkward and she rolled with it (because she’s cool like that.)

This friendship has been SO life-giving, especially during a period of time that was rough for both of us.

You know what I learned?

Awkward is fine.

Mess is also fine. Real pants were very rarely a part of Mondays. Sometimes (often) we’d have crap days and just kind of zone out while the kids watched Little Einsteins, but we were together, sharing life and mess, and it somehow made it all a little more doable.

Friendship can be be glorious. CS Lewis famously said,

Friendship… is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…”

This kind of friend is worth those awkward missteps.

It’s hard, as she leaves, to let go of her company for now, but so good to remember what God’s done. Two exhausted mamas with little to give (apart from chaos) stumbled (through poor manners) into a friendship that was His perfect provision for both.

God bless, my friend. See you later.

---

Other posts from this series can be found here.