Outstretched arms

I've been re-reading journal entries from 2 and a half years ago, during my first year living in California. I was totally shocked to read something I'd written in May of 2003, about 4 months after I had started going to church at 1st Pres - Berkeley: "I really like this church in Berkeley, but it is hard to be patient about finding friends there. Sometimes I feel like other people don't like me - I don't get it. Why do I feel like such an outsider?"

I can't believe I wrote that about a church that I came to consider my family. We laughed together and cried together. I was challenged in my faith, challenged to step up to lead, and strengthened through amazing friendships. But above all, I was loved. I was loved in a real, palpable, honest, true way. My friends at that church loved me for everything I was and everything I failed to be. I belonged.

But how easily I forget that it wasn't that way from the beginning. I remember Berkeley as a place I plugged into quickly and seamlessly. In my memories, there was always a Becky-shaped hole at that church that I fit right into. But in reality, I was NOT received with outstretched arms. It took time to get to know people, to share in their lives, to allow them to share in mine. But isn't that the beauty of friendships, and of community? I don't think God meant it to be something to take lightly, or to enter into frivolously. Friendships that last require time to nurture, and are grounded in so much more than knowing someone's name and phone number, than sitting next to them at church, or laughing at the same joke.

So maybe it's OK that I still feel like an outsider around here. Maybe I will be sitting in front of a computer, 2 and a half years from now, marveling that I once wondered how my piece would fit into the puzzle here in Boulder. And, who knows, maybe then it will be time to move again. :)