One of the hardest things about moving on to a new stage in life is finding fellowship. My brother and a bunch of his friends just graduated from college and I feel for them. It’s hard to find friends and people to do things with, even in the church, when you’ve been used to living on campus and spending every waking moment with people your age with similar interests and values as you.

When we moved here, making friends and filling the need in my heart for fellowship was the toughest part. I remember crying, thinking I would never have friends here. I thought we would never fit in with people at church and never be feel comfortable doing anything with them outside of church services.

I know this happens to a lot of people because I’ve talked to friends who went through the same thing after graduating form college and/or moving away from family and friends. But it could also happen because other people move, or your friends seem to “move on” in life without you.

I have a feeling it will happen again soon when all of the married friends we’ve made here start having children. We plan to wait till Pearson is out of school. I fear that the other couples will start having babies and they will be too busy for us. It’s not their fault. Babies take up a lot of time and energy. Besides, we will start to have less and less in common with them.

But the thing is, if you want fellowship to happen, you have to make it happen. You can’t wait for someone else to ask you to get some coffee, or have a bible study, or go to Ceder Point with them. If you want it, make it happen. Put yourself out there and meet new people at your new church. Make it a point to go visit the new parents and just sit and talk. Invite people to your house for game nights. I know, easier said than done, right?

I don’t have the type of personality for that. But Pearson seems to. The only problem is fellowship doesn’t seem to be as pressing to him as it is to me. Well, maybe that’s not the right way to say it. He just doesn’t miss it. It could be because I just crave deep relationships and men are typically more comfortable with surface-deep relationships where you just talk about football (I got this from His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F Harvey – I’m not making it up). It could be because he sees people in his lab every day and has friends at work while I work from home and the only interaction I have is with my dog.

Anyway, we’ve been very lucky with the church home we found here. It was difficult at first, but once we started putting ourselves out there, they took us in completely. And I know as life goes on and people have kids or move away or whatever changes might happen, we’ll just have to make fellowship a priority and make it happen ourselves.

How do you foster fellowship in these situations?
Thanks for reading!