You Gotta Have Friends
No mom is an island
by Rachel Balducci
in Just me
on Sunday, October 16, 2011 3:01 PM
My friend called the other day to invite me to hit the road with her. It wasn’t a play-date invitation so much as a call-to-arms, a survival outing in search of sanity. She was facing a long morning with two active toddlers and the last thing she wanted was to wander around picking up mess after mess for the next four hours.
The timing wasn’t perfect — I had just gotten back from an errand. I had already been on the road and besides, where she wanted to meet was further out than I normally go. But on the other hand, I reasoned, there wasn’t anything going on. There was no scheduling conflict and I had to decide if my slight reservation was valid, or if it was simply because heading out was not part of My Plan for the day.
I had no real reason to say no, and the more I thought about it, there was a very compelling reason to say yes. My friend invited me, and sometimes inviting someone is another way of saying “help!”
How many times, I reminded myself, have I called a friend with a casual invitation to lunch when on the inside I was screaming “Help me! I am overwhelmed! I need a positive interaction with someone who can talk me down from my crazy!”
This is where having close, personal friends comes in handy.
Getting that sanity pep talk is sometimes just a matter of sitting across the booth from someone who wants nothing more from you than to see you smile. Sometimes the best dose of reality (happy, good reality) is having a positive interaction with someone who can force you out of your own train of thoughts, especially if you are in a challenging season.
I said yes to my friend. When I told her I’d load up and head out and sit at the indoor play-place of a fast-food restaurant on that rainy morning, my response had little to do with my love of chicken nuggets and free drink refills. It was about building a relationship, about being willing to forgo my own To Do list and put someone else’s needs ahead of my own.
Of course, spending time with friends isn’t an excuse to just let everything go, and it can’t be about choosing friends over family responsibilities. There has to be balance in the midst of this. As someone who is at times too attached to my To Do list, I find that it’s good for me to push myself here and there when these moments arise. (Someone on the reverse side of this might have to remind themselves that saying no and staying home might sometimes be in order.)
Taking the time to build relationships sometimes means pushing ourselves out of our own little world. Having friends is fun of course, but it’s also an important part of maintaining our sanity and of building the Church.
When I’m around others, it builds me up and it also allows me to share God’s love.
A mid-morning play-date isn’t changing the world — or maybe it is.
Those times when I’ve casually but desperately arranged a meet-up with friends, it has been the difference between getting undone and getting a grip. Instead of wallowing in my sad little state, it has offered a glimpse of truth — a reminder that this moment (or week or month) won’t always be this challenging. I get the encouragement that whatever little thing I’m annoyed about, that it’s usually not as bad as it seemed.
In the end, I had a great time with my friend. Maybe she wasn’t feeling so desperate after all. Maybe she just wanted to see my smiling face and when it was all said and done, pushing through ended up being as much a blessing for me as I was thinking it would be for her.
— Faith & Family Live blogger Rachel Balducci also blogs at Testosterhome. This column originally appeared in the Southern Cross.
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