finding my place…

The best welcome home ever…. =)

The kids are down for nap, and I’m about to get started on a big freezer cooking prep. Before I do, I felt like I’d write a bit.

We spent a glorious week at the beach with my parents and my brother’s family. It was one of those vacations when you’re really wishing you had an extra few days, so that’s how worth it all the packing and hauling was this time.

Now that we’re back, I’m feeling discombobulated. Yep, that’s about the only word for it. Combined with the downer from getting back to real life after vacation, and the worry and frustration from having a 5-year-old with violent temper tantrums, I’m also feeling very “in between.”

MOPs will be starting up soon, and I won’t be there. That’s been “my place” for the last few years. I’ve gotten easy friendships and playdates and contacts from MOPs with other women who get where I am and what I’m going through, so I have camped there and put down tent stakes.

Well, it’s now time to move on. And I don’t really know exactly where I’m going and who I’ll find there.

As much as I love my church, I haven’t found a solid place to camp there. We don’t live near most other young families in the church. The Sunday School class that we joined when we first joined the church didn’t yield us any close friendships. I feel like we tried, but there wasn’t a perfect fit there. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, but you know…

I have scattered friendships here and there that are developing, and that’s good, but those are newish, and so I don’t have the settled feeling that I would like.

I joined a local homeschool group, and the kickoff social is next week. I’ve gotten a couple of calls from ladies in charge, and they seem very nice. But I feel afraid to pin too many hopes on this. I’m not doing the co-op with them because that’s not where I want to go right now with our homeschooling, so I may be setting myself up for a chance to feel left out when everybody else does the co-op but us. Who knows?

And then there’s our current Sunday School class. It’s splitting into two classes because it got too large. Great problem, right? Well, we are going with the teacher that we grow and learn most easily with on Sunday mornings. (Although, honestly, the other teacher is another fantastic option, too. We’re swimming in too many great choices.) The class is a very diverse one of different ages and stages, but we provide the “married with more than one young child” diversity.

At the planning meeting last night for the new class, it became apparent after 10 minutes at the dinner table with most of the women in the new class that the majority of them have known each other for the last several years in a variety of ways.

After hearing some ideas for reaching out into the community as a class, including going to a place to socialize in the evening so we can become regulars there and be an open group that non-Christians can feel comfortable with, I felt even more lost. “Happy hour” isn’t too happy when you have three small children. I love my brothers and sisters in Christ, and we’re all doing our best, but I don’t know how I fit in and what I can do to make this feel more natural.

Getting the picture of why I feel discouraged today? Anyway, just pray the funk lifts, and I can move onward and upward with confidence…