On Friendship and Children

From our guest room that adjoins our master via a midcentury pink bathroom, I can see the yellow house where all of the children live.  Our neighborhood is mostly comprised of older people, with ourselves and our next-door neighbors being the only ones younger than age 50 living in our immediate vicinity.  The yellow house has young children, and presumably young parents, living there as well, though I've never met them.  I drive slowly by their house knowing that the kids are often playing football or tag in the yard, darting across the street at times with squeals of delight as they run from their opponent.  

A lot of my neighbors are elderly, the types of people who might benefit from a geriatric nurse practitioner working with them, but they are sweet. Some houses sit empty except for the warm months when the owners travel from Georgia or eastern NC to check in on things and enjoy the lake in the summer months.  

From our backyard, I can hear the laughter and screams of the children in the yellow house.  Doc hears them too, and the old curmudgeon that he is barks and barks at them, trying to scare them out of having fun.  They ride by on bicycles sometimes and this infuriates Doc even more-- moving things on wheels are concerning to him.  Yesterday I was folding laundry in our guest room, as this is the place I have designated as a good laundry folding room since it is easy to carry things through our bathroom to put away after.  I heard loud claps and squeals of glee as I matched socks and folded towels.  

I wonder a lot about whether we will one day have those same sounds coming from our home, and I am still hopeful that someday we will.  I've been burdened by being a woman without children in her 30s recently.  I wrote a small snippet on social media about it this week, and I was surprised at the responses I got both privately and publicly.  I wanted to say more, but you are so limited in these little captioned spaces.  I have a very on and off relationship with social media, and one of the reasons I often come back is that I miss writing, and I use captions sometimes as a way to write when I don't have the time or the energy for longer essays like this. After another string of pregnancy announcements and bump dates recently, I came so close to writing it off again, but I decided to stay and to push through, and to be a different voice in the midst of those voices, along with those who don't have those exciting updates to share. 

Women without children feel something deep in their core about this; there is something about our identity that feels wrapped up in this topic.  Interviewers of celebrities and public figures without children will often ask about this, as it seems something key to a person's identity somehow.  I was reading Ann Patchett's collection of essays, These Precious Days, and she has an essay titled "There Are No Children Here" about her choice to not have children.  I was so envious of her resolution to not have children, that she had come to this conclusion so early in life and admits that she never once wrestled with this decision.  As a vegetarian and someone who does not drink, she equates not wanting children to not wanting a gin and tonic or a hamburger.  She did not have an identity crisis or any sort of moral quandary about her decision.

But when you desire children and do not have them, whether it's due to any number of reasons-- infertility, lack of a partner to have children with, medical problems that prevent you from having children, recurrent pregnancy loss, not having the finances for children, not having family support to have children, being concerned about genetics that could be passed down, etc-- you feel like everyone else has what you want all the time.  You feel like an outsider looking into a life that you thought you would have, but you aren't sure if you ever will. You show up to family events where it seems that everyone your age has 3 or 4 kids, and you answer polite questions about your dog and your place of employment.  

They cannot fathom what your life looks like without children; those days are long gone from their memories. And you think you can imagine their life with children, but you cannot.  You idealize the chaotic schedules, you think you could handle the early mornings since you like getting up early anyways, and you think "well I know they seem tired, but I  would do things differently and not be as tired as they are."  You hear their complaints about life with children and feel a bitterness inside-- don't they know that some people want those very things that they complain about? The grass is always greener, as the saying goes. When I talk with friends who are mothers about how I binge watched a TV show or read some pages in a book, they say things like, "Oh I miss having time for that, I wish I could do that." They love their children, yet they desire the freedom they think I have without them.  I love my free time, but I desire the tight schedule with school drop-offs and pickups, with soccer practice and dance recitals and a sink piled with dirty dishes, idealizing tucking children into bed and reading favorite stories from my childhood to them. I don't have a way to conceptualize the temper tantrums and the constant diaper changes, the cold cup of coffee in the morning and the lack of time or energy to exercise. 

I've watched my friendships evolve as people I am closest with enter into that era that I thought we would join them in, as I sit and wonder if we have been left behind.  Moms have mom friends, they have people that they get together with for playdates, people they meet at the playground every Tuesday at 11 or for fairy tale time at the library every other week.  I could show up with my dogs, but some kids are scared of dogs, and my dogs can't run and go down the slide so easily.  I can't relate to the problems with breastfeeding or that Tommy isn't sleeping through the night, that potty training isn't going as they had hoped (I'll interject, "Oh, I potty trained my puppy! No diapers to clean up but lots of paper towels and puddles on the floor! No, no puddles for kids?").  It feels like there is a club that moms enter when they have or adopt a child, whether they have one or ten; not being a mom but wanting to be, you feel as though your invitation got lost in the mail.  

As the friend without children, I make my schedule work around nap times of friends' kids and flex to do double dates when they can find childcare for their children.  I am grateful that I have a flexible work schedule and can talk at 2PM on a random Tuesday, otherwise I'm not sure that my mom friends could fit me into their already busy and exhausting schedules.  I am not bitter about this piece, but I do wonder if there is not a slight tilt of the scales here, that the voices of the childless are drowned out by those with children, and it feels like maybe we are misunderstood. Maybe if we do someday have children, I'll read these words and think "you just had no idea. You couldn't possibly understand." Perspective changes everything, and right now, I have but one solitary perspective. 

What does that mean for my friendships with my other friends who do not have children? Well, that's a unique space to navigate.  Some have chosen not to have children, and I feel like an alien in those conversations. I can't relate to discussions about birth control and how to find more permanent solutions to that.  Some friends do desire children "later" and aren't really in a place of desiring that now-- they seem to have such a peace about where God has them, they don't seem to understand the timeline we are on. Many are younger than we are, because in the southern Bible belt, many people are married right out of college and having children shortly thereafter.  A handful are walking a similar road as us, and in them I find a great kinship.  They text encouragement and prayers to me, they sit and weep, they wrestle with questions of "when? how? will it ever be?" 

Something I've realized about myself recently is that I am often the initiator in my friendships, and I've fallen prey to feelings of deep isolation when I don't have the energy to reach out to a friend to hang out.  I've read that initiators often feel very lonely because their calendars remain empty unless they reach out to fill them, and in probably 75-80% of my relationships, I have realized that I am usually the one who texts to say, "are you free next week? Would you want to get coffee or lunch?"  I was pleasantly surprised recently when a get-together that was previously arranged fell through, and weeks later, someone reached out to reschedule it.  I kept thinking "I need to reach out to them at some point."  It was such a delight to have someone else initiate, and while I wish that happened more, I think most people assume that everyone is too busy.  In the spirit of fellowship and friendship, I've learned to inch out there in the midst of busy schedules to be intentional about time together, to be ok with being rejected or denied if someone just doesn't have the capacity for it.  

I feel a kinship with Sarah and Hannah in the Old Testament.  I've read their stories time and again, and each time I learn something new about the sovereignty and faithfulness of God.  When I am feeling left out, He reminds me that I am deeply loved and that He has given me rich community. When I feel forgotten, He reminds me that I am fearfully and wonderfully made in His image, that I was not a mistake or accident.  When I feel like my plans are not going as I expected, He reminds me that He is on the throne, that He is sovereign and good, and that His plans are better than any I could conjure up.  When I feel behind, He gently reminds me that when the time is right, He will deliver me.  It's sort of taboo to talk about the enemy, even in the church-- people start getting squirmy and shifting in their seats when you mention that there is not only a God of the universe but one who is His direct enemy.  But I'm going to talk about him, too.  Because he is the one who whispers lies to me-- that I am lonely, that I have no friends, that I am an outsider, that I am not enough, that I am being punished.  It takes prayer and time in solitude for me to recognize these untruths and to develop truths to battle those lies, and it's probably a practice I will have to continue for the rest of my life to put thoughts to rest that are unhelpful to me and unhelpful in accomplishing what God calls us to.  

"We demolish arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5

What's the point of all of this? I don't really know. Maybe it's to encourage you to reach out to someone to get together, regardless of the season of life you are in. Maybe it's to ask you to reach beyond the greener grass in either person's yard and extend an invitation.  "Come have coffee during nap time today." "Do you and the kids want to come over for dinner? Maybe go on a walk?" Maybe it's asking you to lay aside whatever differences there are in the name of togetherness and community, of friendship and of truly seeing and knowing someone wherever God has them, though you may not entirely be able to understand it. Maybe it's asking you to celebrate someone when you don't feel like celebrating, or maybe it's putting pride aside to initiate a conversation, a time of togetherness, whatever that looks like. I think we are all better when we are together, no matter what that togetherness looks like. I wonder if we can't extend a mutual grace beyond what we know in our own daily lives to welcome in another. 

XO,

C