My Social Media-less Life

“Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful friend who can find?”

‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭20‬:‭6‬, ‭ESV (emphasis and word change are mine)‬‬

I haven’t talked about it in a while, so I’ll reset my life story briefly: my dad was in the Army from 8 months before I was born until well after I turned 21.

(Side note: becoming a “civilian” was weird to me… I went from being an “Army dependent” to being an adult with responsibilities and rent. Can confirm, being an Army dependent is WAY underrated and there are days I wish I could go back to that. If only to not have to think about money so much…)

During my entire childhood, I figured no friendship would truly last into adulthood. There was no way! We moved less than most families, but we still moved a fair bit and writing letters, while fun, was hard to keep up with after a while.

Until I was a pre-teen, the internet was more a place I would go to find information on something than somewhere I would go to talk to someone I hadn’t seen in a while. That’s what phones were for after all… and then of course, it was only phone calls.

I wasn’t as good at getting phone numbers from my friends as my brother was, and my childhood suffered for it. His friends ended up being my friends simply because I had none of my own that would keep in touch after a few months.

Fast forward to adulthood, and so far all the friends I’ve kept have been friends I made as an adult. My mom had only one friend who stayed in touch occasionally from her childhood, so I knew child-to-adult friends were possible, but I had never seen it done well.

And then today, it hit me. But first, another brief rabbit-trail…

The pastor of my childhood church took a group of people to another small church in the middle of nowhere Missouri where there was a revival going on. This was the mid-90s; revival meetings were not uncommon. This particular church was different, however, as their “revival meeting” was more a “revival lifestyle.”

That particular revival lasted nearly 3 more years after we first visited and the church relocated to Kansas City, Missouri.

Surprise! It’s the church at which I currently am a member nearly 30 years later.

Back to today…

Because of my childhood pastor introducing my family to that church (the name of which is now Revive Church Kansas City), we stayed connected to all the things they were doing and that was ultimately what brought my family to Kansas City shortly after my brother and I became adults.

But the connecting factor here? My brother came on an invitation from his childhood best friend and when he got married, they moved and it was originally to be a part of the church.

When I needed a clean break from some drama in smallish-town living, I crashed at my brother’s place until I found a business willing to hire me and keep me in Kansas City so I didn’t have to go back. The ministry school I went to was run by this same church.

After my dad died, the only thing keeping my mom in that same town was her house (it was her dream house). So she made the move to be 2 hours closer to the rest of her family.

Suffice it to say, we believe in the mission of the church… and so does my childhood pastor. And his family. And some other people from that church.

Now we come to the point of this blog.

My brother’s childhood best friend was also the son of our childhood pastor. They had quit pastoring to come to Revive Church ahead of the rest of us.

And then that same pastor’s daughter started coming back to church a few years ago and she was someone that I had kind of hung out with when we were younger, but we were 6 years apart and for kids, that might as well be a whole generation of living.

(This person is the reason I decided getting a tattoo wasn’t going to kill me or damn me to hell. We also hang out about once a month or every other month, depending on schedules.)

And then a childhood friend of the daughter moved to Kansas City and started coming to the church shortly after, and she was much closer in age to me (we were at least in the same classroom when we went to private school) and we had hung out on more occasions, but usually not without another person present.

(This person and I also try to hang out together with friends or just alone every few months.)

And then my brother’s other childhood best friend turned his life around and also began coming to the same church.

(He just got married near the end of last month to someone he met at the church!)

So if anyone is keeping count, that is now FOUR childhood friends that I’ve not only kept, but have managed to maintain somehow, even after having little to no contact in the intervening years.

And the fun part is that we’re all adults now and we talk about things we can all relate to since we’ve been adults longer than we were ever kids.

The point of this whole post was simply this: you never know what kind of answers God will give you when you ask the wildest questions like, “Why don’t I have any friends from my childhood?”

Welp… that answers that question.

(But also… hopefully you enjoyed my roundabout way of saying I have adult friends that I also knew as a child. 🙂 )