I have lived full time in Kansas City for 12 months; and spent the previous 12 months living in KC part time. Its my home, I very much love it here. But I still feel as if I don't have a lot of friends in the area. I have my small group (which is really not small at all, with 13 couples) and the women I work with. I consider many of these women friends.
I'm working on developing really strong relationships with the women around me. I love them already. I love seeing them every week. But I often wonder if these friendships I've made over the past 12 months will be sustained when I'm on another continent, if they're strong enough to survive our five years in Rome. I want to have the friend I can call from Rome (via Skype of course :)) and verbally vomit to about all the crazy culture shock I'm going through. I think about this a lot.
That being said, I'm still trying to grow roots. Being intentional about it just makes me think about 'growing roots' constantly. It's a struggle. I feel awkward and out of place. Success though - I have attended small group both last week and this week and didn't talk about Rome once. It was a goal of mine. Everyone is I'm sure tired of hearing "Rome, Rome, Rome, support, support, support." I'm not really sure why I had this goal, but its now been accomplished. Maybe I'll mention Rome next week. Probably not.
So, growing roots is hard. And awkward. Well, maybe I'm just awkward.
You can call me (don't even have to use Skype) to verbally vomit about culture shock! :)
ReplyDeleteAs far as not mentioning Rome...it's a hard thing to do, because that's what your focus and passion is. You can find out easily what people are passionate about because that is what they talk about the most. Granted, we do have a life outside of support raising, but that's a high priority focus right now...so don't feel bad, you're not alone!