Peopling

I am married to a dear man who creates his own words. As I was pondering the title of this particular writing, I decided to look into if peopling was actually a word or if hubby was wearing off on me.

The Urban Dictionary notes peopling as the ability to tolerate people and their stupidity as well as your own stupidity in a public place. Hmmm. Not all that flattering of a definition. I like to think of “peopling” as being out and about mingling and interacting.

As a younger me, my sanguine self was quite adept at peopling, content to flit about hither and yon interjecting my bubbly self into many unique and fun settings, making action happen if life was to quiet. If all else failed I could always bring a scone or some of my fresh salsa and life would be right side up again. As I have gotten older, my desires to mingle and interact have morphed into different and sometimes unfamiliar shapes. The past decade has brought several major life traumas to our family necessitating huge changes in locale for us which resulted in uprooting and needing to readjust to new faces and places. This, if I am completely honest has been brutal for my 40 something brain to process and cope with. Starting over with friendships on quite a few levels has been overwhelming. It’s not easy breaking into circles that have been established for long periods of time, sometimes decades. I have compared myself to the Israelites after they left their bondage in Egypt. I know with out a shadow of a doubt that we are in much healthier places but I still miss the “leeks and the garlic” of Egypt which were the established comfortable routines like having monthly planned activities with other families and friends, having persons who love and appreciate my scones, and having someone to go camping with in the summer time. Being older and tireder and wondering what I have to offer, plagues the epicenter of my thoughts as I dream of being settled and comfortable in relationships.

Now I am not over here in some black hole but some days I am sad at how lonely I feel. (Important Side Note: I promise I do have a real friend or two.) As I have come to grips with the current season, I have become more aware and intentional. I listen and watch and hear other people’s hearts and the scary and sad, but somewhat hopeful in a very strange way thing is, I am not alone in this. People are lonely. People around me are lonely. People who sit around me at church, in my job, at my kids’ school are lonely. Loneliness is reaching epidemic levels. How do I know? People have told me so. Some say it just like that. Others say it more subtly. People are even writing books about it. Jennie Allen in her book “Find Your People” says this – God said it after he made the first man. It is not good for man to be alone. So, as messy as relationships might be, we can not live life alone. Allen goes on to share ways to find your circle of people.

I have often thought with humor about how it might look to run an ad for friendship with the same theme as those singles ads that used to run in the Sunday paper. Wanted: Family Friendships. Prefer imperfect family units. Grumpy dads and helicopter moms acceptable. Love of camping, porch sitting, low country boils, veggie tales music and nut pickout nights a plus. Or Wanted: Christ Honoring Female Friendship. Prefers slightly bulgy, non perfect 35-65 year old female. Listening skills a plus. Must love Jesus, speaking the truth in love and celebrating life events together.

If it were only that easy right?!

One of the issues we face is we are to busy. Way to busy.

Secondly, we live in an era where 500 or even a 1,000 social media friends is the norm. Sadly, 100 likes on a post is not even any where close in value to a simple conversation in person with a real honest to goodness unadulterated person. We have become a dehumanized people hiding behind the screens of our phones and laptops where sadly we can say mean and hurtful things and even post anonymously only feeding the giant monster of loneliness and despair.

I am convinced that if each one of us took the time to work on building relationships in person, this epidemic of lonely people would diminish. But how do we do so?

I love what it says in Hebrews 10. Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up the habit of meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another…

I do not want to take things out of context and I certainly don’t profess to be a deep theological student, digging into the back meanings and greek and hebrew meanings but am more of a words at face value kind of gal. I kinda like how this verse actually just spells some things out. Sound simple? Not exactly. Peopling IS messy, this we know for certain, and takes work but can truly bring about the biggest blessing in a lonely world.

Who’s with me?