by Kate Wildman
When I started college, I moved so far from home. Farther than I had ever thought possible. Farther than anyone should be expected to move at the ripe age of eighteen. We’re talking roughly three thousand…steps...from my childhood home…Scratch all of that. I went to college basically in my back yard, at a school where my mother was a professor and where I knew approximately everyone. I never had to go through the relocating pains that most of my friends went through when they started college, but this made my transition when I moved to Washington, D.C. three years later that much harder. As I worked to build a new home in a place that felt like anything but, I discovered a few principles that would have made my transition so much easier. By the time I left D.C. to return back to Chicago for graduation just nine months later, I left deep friendships that endure to this day, a job I loved, a church that felt like family, and streets that still feel like an old friend every time I return. As you look beyond graduation and consider your own transitions away from the places and people you call home, here are some things I wish someone had told me to make my move that much easier from the very beginning. 1) Join a Church, FAST. There’s nothing more important than ensuring your soul is fed as everything around you feels uncertain. Finding (and committing to!!) a church is hands down the most crucial aspect of your move. By surrounding yourself with other believers from the very beginning of your time in a new city, you establish friendships quickly, invite accountability, and easily find ways to serve your new community. In each of my subsequent moves, I set a time limit of no more than six weeks to find and commit to a church body. Church shopping only serves to distract, discourage putting down roots, and prioritize your own desires over obedience—as soon as you find a Bible-preaching church where you feel you can serve, stop looking and dig in. 2) Find Two Communities Loneliness, for me, is by far the most difficult part of any move. In order to maximize my chances of making friends quickly, I always make sure that I look to establish at least two communities when I move. These can include your church family, your co-workers, a weeknight basketball league, a book club, a local food pantry—no matter the avenue, make sure there’s more than one, and with as little cross-over as possible. This will force you to be bold, while increasing the number of people you interact with in a place that feels so unfamiliar. 3) Put Down Roots It’s easy when you move to focus on how easy it is to up and go somewhere new if it doesn’t work out, particularly on those Friday nights where you don’t have plans and are homesick for the people you left behind. When I move, I try to frame every decision I make as if the place I was living was going to be my home for the next ten years, and immediately start establishing routines, whether that’s stopping at the same coffee place every Saturday, taking the same route to work each day, setting aside a night of the week for small groups, or finding a friend to have a weekly coffee date. This allows me to take intentional ownership over getting involved at church, understanding and serving the needs of my community, and, most importantly, cultivating deep relationships with others. It’s hard to build meaningful connections, much less contentment, if you constantly have one foot out the door. 4) Make the First Move I can’t encourage you enough to stop waiting for other people to invite you into their community. If you are lonely, and if you want to build community, it’s up to you to take ownership and make the first move. Ask people you find interesting out to coffee, start connecting the many people you meet, host groups at your apartment, invite others to join you as you explore your new neighborhood—the more time you wait for someone to ask you first, the more discouraged you will feel if it doesn’t happen. You have the power, however lonely you feel, to make others feel significant and included, and that’s more important to building lasting community than easing your own sense of discomfort. 5) Let Yourself Grieve I believed the lie for a long time that because God called me somewhere new, I wasn’t allowed to feel homesick for the place I left behind. This ended up building into deeply-seeded discontentment and bitterness, as well as an unhealthy ideation of home. We’re all called to be nomads on this earth, sure—but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. When you feel sad or nostalgic or homesick, don’t ignore it. Lean into it, grieve the good things you left behind, and allow the Lord to carry your burdens and remind you that he, in the end, is more than enough to satisfy your longing. 6) Cultivate Old Connections As you start to build connections in your new home, don’t be surprised when your friendships from your hold home change. Even though these changes can sometimes be even more difficult than building new friendships, it’s important to also remember to cultivate your old friendships, even if they look different now than they used to. The people you left behind—your friends, family, and church body—are all your brothers and sisters, first and foremost. Be realistic about how your relationships change, but don’t drop the people who are important to you even though they are no longer close in proximity. 7) Keep Your Satisfaction in the Lord Above all else, hold on to the truth that no earthly thing can satisfy you. When we are lonely, or disappointed, or anxious, it’s our heart’s first move to long for change, and too easy to look to a person, a place, a job, or an emotion to satisfy our longing. Use times of transition to remind you that your home is in Heaven, and ask the Lord to cultivate a deep contentment in his word, his promises, and his salvation above cultivating a sense of home. He goes before you, he stands behind you, and he alone can satisfy.
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by Mary Elizabeth Goodell
Have you seen that meme? The one of Kim Kardashian crying? Make up smeared, hair mussed, and her face scrunched up in a whine? While the Kardashian look is often imitated, that image isn't one most people want to replicate. Even for someone as lovely as Kim, it's not a good look. But there I was, the night of my college senior banquet, doing the full on Kim Kardashian Kry alone in my car. My friends had all gone to the after party, but I had excused myself, saying that I was too tired. Really I had been trying to get out and be alone as quickly as possible, because my inner Kardashian was about to burst. Senior Banquet is supposed to be a little emotional. It's an entire evening dedicated to reflecting on the last four years. It makes sense that I would have been a little weepy as I reminisced. But it wasn't the nostalgic pictures of myself as a freshmen that set me off. It was something much much dumber than that. At the end of the evening, a group of my friends all gathered to take a picture. While I had made lots of sweet friends at school, this particular group had been my home base. My crew. My fam-bam. I had been through a lot with them and had prayed with and for them in some of the most exciting and heartbreaking times of my young adult life. They all clamored together to fit in the frame. The event had just ended and people were beginning to leave so they wanted to fit us all into one more memory before we left. I stood at the back of the room and watched. No one called my name. None of them invited me to join the picture. No one said "Wait! Where's Mary Elizabeth?" I'm pretty tall, and usually hard to miss in a crowd. Feeling invisible is not a familiar feeling and I hated it. There they were, all 11 of my dearest. And not one of them noticed I was gone. None of them missed me. Looking back, it was an innocent mistake. They'd all been standing near each other and got a photo. They never intended to exclude me. It was a spontaneous photo op and they didn't realize I wasn't there. They didn't mean to hurt me or leave me out. It was an accident. But something in me snapped like a twig. I remember feeling like a bowling ball had landed on my chest. I stood silently and felt all of the icky horrible feelings that hide under our skin like monsters under the bed. We hadn't even graduated, and they were forgetting me. It's like I wasn't there. If I wasn't in this photo, they would never remember I was here. I was already on the outside. Somehow, I just knew that they would all be looking at this photo for years to reminisce on their college years and that I would be erased from their memories. This was the beginning of the end. This was the moment I realized I was losing my friends and becoming mayor of lonely town. It was incredibly vain and selfish on my part. I could not have been more self centered about it. Of course they loved me and cared about our mutual experiences. But all the emotions of senior year and the impending mystery of life post-grad were looming and had me scared out of my senses. Literally. The intense sadness I felt was not logical. But I was so scared to graduate and disappear. It was like that scene in the final Harry Potter book, when Hermione erases herself from her parents memory and her image fades from all the family photos. Honestly, I felt like graduating was akin to..well...obscurity. I had been so known on campus. I was needed and seen and visible. I had spent the last four years establishing myself and grounding myself in community, and now all of that was being taken away from me. My friends had made me happy, and now it was Iike it had never happened and I would be alone. So, there I was, crying harder than that one time Kim lost her diamond earrings. So do you know what? I made a list of all the things that would be the same after I graduated. I got specific. I would still have the same clothes, I would still have my Apple Music free trial, all of my stuff would still go in the same purse. I could still make quesadillas when I was in a good mood and watch Seinfeld on my laptop. My stuffed giraffe could sit on my bed like before and I could take my poster of Audrey Hepburn with me into adulthood too. As I wrote that list, I tried to think of everything. But you may be noticing that I missed a biggie. It wasn't until I had been graduated for a few weeks that the truth kicked in. Obviously, Jesus Christ would still be Lord of my life. In high school, in college, in Chicago, and forever and ever, amen. I had cried over a selfie because I thought graduating meant losing my friends and that losing my friends meant losing my foundation. So much of my spiritual growth and emotional happiness had come from them, that I forgot exactly who it was that bolstered all of that. I am not going to lie to you, friend. It is hard to keep in touch after graduation. You may go months without hearing from people you once spoke to every day. But, it was never the friends who grounded me. And it was never the friends that saved me. It was never your friends that saved you. I had wonderful friends, I'm sure you had some good ones too. They loved me and pointed me to Jesus. The Lord had used them to grow me and sustain me and bless me. Which is precisely why separation from them was not cause for panic. They had been a vehicle, not the destination. The stability had always come from Christ, often via those sweet friendships. But Jesus, the giver of that joy, was coming with me to Chicago, just as He was going with them to Colorado and New York and Guatemala and Arkansas. So even if you ugly cry because you are losing the folks who make you happy- remember who brings you pure joy. Friends are a beautiful way the Lord demonstrates care for us. But remember that friends, the best friends, reflect Christ to you. And in seasons of rich community or anonymous loneliness, Jesus is the river that pours into us. In His timing, the Lord will bring new community to surround you, and many of those old pals will still be important, lifegiving people to you. But promise me that when you want to Kim Kry, you'll remember that you have not lost your true foundation. by Joanna Meyer
reposted with Joanna's permission from Denver Institute for Faith and Work. I knew the January Women’s March had captured the national zeitgeist when photos of a high school friend wearing one of the infamous pink knit caps alongside his daughter appeared on Facebook. “Our house is filled with nasty women,” his sign proclaimed, one of millions of similar posters waving coast to coast. Who would have dreamed the Women’s March would become the largest protest gathering in U.S. history? What a spectacle! But after an initial wave of excitement, life moved on; the nation went back to the busyness of carpool runs, cat videos, and quarterly reports. As the intensity of the day faded, I wondered if the event accomplished what its organizers had hoped. Marchers experienced a cathartic outpouring of emotion, but would that expression lead to action? Could the solidarity formed on a single day produce lasting change? Seeing the emotion of the women’s march fade reinforced my conviction that greater gains will be won through the faithful engagement of godly women in the boardrooms, family rooms, and classrooms of our communities than pithy posters or well-timed tweets. The word ambition makes some women uneasy, calling to mind self-serving strivers who pursue their goals at any cost. Other women say, “I’ve never seen myself as ambitious,” associating ambition with character traits that don’t fit their personality or role in life. Yet, as featured speaker Carolyn McCulley argues, “God has made us to be people who have desires… Ambition isn’t just for men, it isn’t just for business — it’s an essential component of being human.” Scripture tells the story of an ambitious God, who set the world in motion and invites us to join his mission of putting our broken world right. To bear God’s image means making his ambitions our own. And his ambitions are not small. To quote theologian John Stott: “Ambitions for God… if they are to be worthy, can never be modest. There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God. Once we are clear that God is King, then we long to see him crowned with glory and honour, and accorded his true place, which is the supreme place, we become ambitious for the spread of his kingdom and righteousness everywhere.” Ambition is not limited by gender or standing in life — it is for everyone who follows God. Christ praised ambition when he blessed those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness,” while Paul strained toward what was ahead… pressing on toward the goal to win the prize for which God had called him (Matt 5:16, paraphrase of Phil 3:13-14.) Ruth, Deborah, Lydia, Rahab, and Priscilla showed similar determination, embodying ambition in their own unique ways. Long after the posters are folded and the hats packed away, our corporations and cul-de-sacs will still need the influence of Christian women ambitiously pursuing Kingdom goals. What would it look like for you to embrace ambition — to explore the dreams God’s given you, for his glory and others’ good? “The Lord announces the word, and the women who proclaim it are a mighty throng.” – Psalm 68:11 by Breezy Mellijor
Community Post College is Tiring So many things post college make community tiring. You work a job with longer hours, you might live in a new city with a new roommate, you’re starting at a new church, you have the list of daily chores (laundry, grocery shopping, making sure your apartment doesn’t become a garbage dump, etc.), and then there’s your social life...what?! How? There’s no time. How do you do it all? Welcome to adulthood. It’s a giant balancing act of responsibilities, obedience, and risks. You will be tired. You will not feel like going to one more church event where you have to awkwardly small talk about life. You will be able to think of a million other things you could be doing instead of getting coffee with that girl you met last week. And guess what? That’s okay. It’s okay to feel exhausted and want to give up. But here’s the thing, DON’T! Part of growing up and maturing is learning when to just jump in and say yes regardless of how you feel. This is something I am currently in the thick of. My introverted-ness will often lead me to say no because I “need time to recharge”, but I do believe Satan uses that to lie to us when we need community most. Be intentional with the people God has placed in your life, regardless of life stage or schedule differences, and make people as high a priority as anything else. God wants community for you as much as you do, so don’t be afraid to say yes even when you’re tired. Community Post College Takes Time Building community outside of college takes a lot longer than you might expect. Depending on your situation, you could be in a totally new place, be in transition for many of the years after college, or be learning how to adjust to what adulthood looks like. Many of my friends have mentioned that community after college has taken a lot longer than they expected. In college, what could have taken days or weeks, might take years in adulthood. That’s okay. That’s not meant to discourage or frighten you, but to set healthy and realistic expectations. If you’re a year or two out of college and haven’t built deep friendships yet, don’t give up! It has taken me 2 years to really feel like I had friends at my church. Because it takes longer post college, fight for community! Sometimes that means saying yes when you really don’t feel like it or inviting over a few people for dinner that you don’t really know or going to that church event where you might not know anyone. Be brave and patient. It’s not a race to find deep community the second you get out of college, even though it might feel like it. God is your greatest and closest friend. Let him comfort you during those seasons where it feels hopeless or like it’s taking way too long. His timing is perfect. There is something so exciting and equally terrifying about this season. Even though it’s easy to come up with a list of reasons that community post college is hard, it’s even easier to list the ways that God is faithful and good and kind and compassionate. He loves you and wants you to be in community. Trust Him to do what only he can do: build deep and rich community in the people around you. It’s probably going to look different than you think, but don’t we need that? So often I think I know what I need when God is the only one who truly knows. He uses community to shape us and teach us how to forgive and to carry us through the ups and downs and to teach us how to work through conflict and...the list could go on. Community post college is hard. It’s challenging, tiring, and takes time, but God is the one in control of it all and will give you exactly what you need when you need it. Ultimately, we only need Him, so run to him in this season and allow Him to do His work in your life. by Breezy Mellijor
I sat at coffee with the girl I’d met a few weeks ago through church and just kept thinking, “This is hard. I want to be at coffee with one of my best friends from school, not forcing conversation with someone I barely know.” Welcome to my sinful and selfish mind. But for some of you reading this, I’m sure you can relate. It’s hard to get to know new people, especially when it is so much easier with college friends who just “get” you. Making friends after graduation is hard, let’s face it. College is like its own little city (for some of you, it’s basically the entire city…) within a larger community. It’s fully functioning and operational. It’s easy to find people who are similar to you...you’re in the same stage of life, you join clubs or organizations that interest you and the people involved, you’re in class with others who might be in your same major. The environment you are in breeds community. This is not so after graduation. The mini communities produced in college dissipate and you need to be intentional about finding new ones. Sound difficult? It is, but there’s hope. First, let’s talk about a few ways community post-college can be hard: Community Post College is Challenging This has already been said but finding and building community after college is pretty challenging. There are numerous variables and reasons for this, but so many of the friends I’ve talked to about this have said the same thing: it’s surprising how hard it is to find community post college. A few reasons for this include
Something that has been a game-changer for me in my quest for community post college is living near people from church and just digging into the hard parts of being in community with people you don’t really know. Our church calls them “Intentional Christian Communities”, and they encourage you to move within a ten-minute walking distance of people from church when your lease is up. My husband and I did this with our two other recently married friends two years ago and it’s amazing to see what God has done in that time. We now have about 25 others from our church living within 10-15 minutes of us in our neighborhood in Chicago and we are doing life together. I don’t know them all very well and it hasn’t been an instant connection, as it often was in college, but I do believe that this is one of the reasons I feel like my community post-college is thriving. So, if you move to a new city, stay in the same one, or go somewhere with friends, don’t try to be all independent...it’s not how we’re meant to live. Move near people you know and those you don’t and dive in! To Be Continued Tomorrow... |
AuthorMay 22nd's post is from Mary Elizabeth Goodell. She lives in Ukrainian Village on the west side of Chicago and works for Hope Works Community Development. She is committed to working with and for the disenfranchised, particularly women who have experienced sexual exploitation and gender based violence.
BloggersWe'll post from a variety of voices of 20-somethings in the Windy City who are navigating life, work and relationships post-college. Archives
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