Through Facebook, I have gotten in touch with some wonderful old friends. There is something so relieving about old friends. It’s like they know that part of your life that they shared with you, and we share that memory without having to explain it. They also remind us of who we have been at different decades of our lives!
I have felt so disconnected these past 5 years or so with the idea of “who I used to be.” My years at home with my parents, being a teenager in youth group and high school, college and missions and dating, Africa, marriage without kids, starting a church plant with amazing people, marriage with kids, now…They are these huge chunks of my life, with a set of different friends, different woes, different joys. When I see friends from these stages of life, I’m so happy but I also really miss when we were together more. I miss the things I used to do that made me “me”, and I miss having free time to just think, hang out, talk about non-deep, silly stuff, and laugh!
I think I’m realizing three things:
1) I have got to make time for friends, old and new. It is difficult, and I don’t know how to do it, but I must! Girls just wanna have fun!
2) I have got to do things that start to thread together the decades of “Lyn”. I used to love to stay up late writing songs, scrapbooking, writing cards to people, reading full books in one night. I could watch romantic comedies for three days straight, eat tons of pizza and candy, and go for a walk outside for 2 hours to make myself feel better, kind of holding my stomach to see if I had added on inches yet. I love icees from the gas station, and looking around at clothes stores for shirts for $2.50. Musicals. Road trips. Girlfriends.
3) Becoming an adult has been a shocker of a transition. I spent SO much time as a child and teenager and college student thinking about what I would be when I grew up, who I would marry, what wonderful contributions I would make to the world. Seriously, I wish I would have believed the people who told me to just be a kid. To enjoy the innocent naivete of having no idea how much my parents were paying for my health insurance, my food, or the roof over my head wherever I roamed. To enjoy the masses of time I had on my hands to write hilarious poems about boys that we hated and collage my entire bedroom wall. Since becoming an adult, there have been disappointments that rock my world, and especially the world of my good friends, and I don’t remember much of that from my first 20 years.
