What do we do when technology isn't enough?

Can I just say? Making friends is hard. It’s scary and uncomfortable and time consuming and honestly just not fun. It honestly sucks being in a place where you have quality friendships you have poured into and developed then trying to find new friendships, comparing them to your old ones (unfairly but you do it anyways) only to realize they aren't as easy or fulfilling as the ones you had in college or high school or from growing up. So, what do we do when technology is not enough to make me feel connected to my friends who are scattered all over the country?

Over coffee with a close friend we talked, caught up and discussed our lives, all the seasons of change and adjustment. I began to notice a theme, “It’s just hard”. I was saying this phrase over and over. I would explain a situation and then after contemplating only grasping for the words, “It’s just hard”.

This entire season of life is just hard. I move to a new place where I know a total of maybe five people when I arrived to almost three months later and that number has maybe grown by ten. If you asked anyone who knows me they would tell you this is “so out of character”, “she’s so friendly there’s no way that’s true”. I’m sorry to say that this is the exact truth that I am living.

 

Now don’t get me wrong I am enjoying my life here but I’m coming to the realization that life has a funny way of playing with our hearts and minds. Somehow they don’t always match and when they don’t it’ s usually because your heart is remembering something important. In my case, my heart is remembering home.

 

Home is not exactly one place or one person but it is my places and my people. I miss my childhood hometown where I began so many friendships and experienced so many memories. I miss my dad, coming home from work or school and walking over to grab a drink with him to process our days. I miss Johnson, the Smokies, soccer, chapel and most of all the community.

 

For so many years I wanted to be somewhere new, always reaching forward, wishing time away but now I find myself longing for times past. It’s a tough place to be homesick, in a new place, experiencing new things and taking many first steps out in the world as a professional for the first time.

 

Maybe you thought you’d have your dream job, dream guy, living in a glamorous place where you instantly have friends you know will be in your life forever. Maybe some of that happened, maybe all of it, maybe none of it. Either way life threw you a curve ball and something came along that made your 20’s just hard.

 

Take heart friends, change is hard, the journey isn’t always easy or fun but what I’m learning is that there are beautiful moments each day that I come home wanting to talk about. Trying to stay present in the moment is a battle, nostalgia is a battle but we don’t have to battle alone. Reach out, cling to the people you love no matter how far they might be right now.

 

So I'm still left with the question: what do you do when technology isn’t enough, when the number of likes and comments on your Instagram picture isn’t enough, when phone calls, Facetime, text messages aren’t enough to bridge the heartache?