Singles Need Married Friends!

I started my walk with Jesus in 2016 as a 22 year old, right out of my undergrad. I am naturally extroverted and love people, meeting new people, adventuring with people...all the things! And I was so so blessed to meet a group of friends in the Young Adult ministry I was in who actually became my close friends. Trips to Joshua tree. In-n-Out after services. Every Sunday lunch and hanging out on Sundays. It was so beautiful and so formational for my soul. And even better, we've stayed friends! After 7 years of friendship we still like each other haha. But when a group of young 20 year olds become and stay friends, you sign up for many life transitions. Since then people have gone to and graduated from Master's programs, started business, traveled the world, gotten married and had babies. Whew! And now, we are still friends, but I moved a couple hours away and am still trying to maintain these beautiful friendships.

Hometown Friends

Out of all those life transitions, the long-lasting ones, aka marriage and kids, are the most impactful. It is completely natural that time and availability changes. Priorities change. Spontaneous trips maybe aren't as practical, but you make anything work! But despite all that, there's something special when we are all in a room, marrieds, singles, people dating and are able to just be. Those who are married have wisdom and experience to share that singles don't and vice versa. The freedom and flexibility of the single life allows for spontaneous hangouts even when the couples with kids can't get away. There's this beautiful ebb and flow that can happen when everyone is intentional about the friendships together.

Also, as a single, it is such a gift to be invited into the homes of my married friends, kids or no, and be in a full home. One with life and mess and energy. As a single, I absolutely love my times of solitude, the flexibility of inviting people over or having a day to myself. My space is my home but there's that different level of hominess in a family home. And singles, we need that. I think the assumption can be that the only way we can have that hominess by creating our own family via a relationship or marriage. But that's simply not true. Yes, that is a different kind of home because it is your own, but if you don't have that that doesn't mean you then miss out on this aspect of life.

There's a book called "7 Myths About Singleness" and the author talks about the simple moments of being in a married friends house to just sit at the kitchen table and do work while life is happening around him. Being invited into bedtime routines a couple days a week. Being invited to their kid's activities and events. Being integrated into family life in ways beyond scheduled, put-together hangouts. I think this is a bit of what we get at when we go to those regular coffee shops or restaurants, to feel that sense of belonging or like you're known in spaces outside of your home.

Married friends, you are needed in the life of the single. You play a role in our lives that are so needed and beautiful. Yes, life gets wild when you are integrating the lives of 2 people, 2 families, kids, a dog, etc. But, if you are part of the Church of Jesus, you are also a beautiful part of living out the blessing Jesus gives in Mark 10: "Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life" (10:29-30, italics mine). The only way the homes and brothers, sisters, etc. become accessible is when home are opened. And some of my most warm memories and moments of belonging have been in the homes of married friends.