**Guest Post** A few weeks ago I joined a writers group in my hometown. I was really impressed with one of the members who is not only a talented writer with much to say, but I loved the ways she says it. Carol Zollinger is a writer and blogger from Northeast Ohio who writes at: The Circus is Here. Here is a guest post from Carol that will touch your heart.
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)
We sat, the seven of us, on a couple of couches and some straight-back wooden chairs pulled around to make a circle, and we talked about our kids. It was a hard morning. We are adoptive moms, all of us who sat around that morning, and we meet bi-monthly or so. Sometimes it goes longer, depending on sports schedules and family trips.
I come home from these gatherings, every time, and my boys ask me what we do there. Talk, I tell them, about mom things. It sounds boring enough that they don’t dive too deep.
I was glad that week that they weren’t home when I got back. I would have had to tell them the whole truth — that we sat there and cried — because the evidence was clear on my blotchy red face.
It’s not unusual for one of us to tear up when we get together. We talk about bad decisions, hard conversations, and difficult behaviors. It isn’t that we don’t talk about good things, too, but we can talk about the good things anywhere. This is the place where we can talk about the rest of it. That morning, there was a lot of the rest of it. That morning, we all cried.
It sounds rough, and it was. But it was also just what I needed. I needed to sit with people who speak my language and say, “This is hard,” and see heads nodding in silent understanding. I needed to sit and listen to their hurts and their fears and do some nodding of my own. I needed to pass the tissue, and to have one passed to me.
I left tired that morning, and sniffly. No one had solved any of my problems. Yet my heart was lighter. The hard things were still hard, but I knew I wasn’t the only one trying to puzzle them out. I was reminded that I had people.
We were never meant to do this on our own. God created Adam, took one look, and decided that one alone would never do. And that was in Eden, before everything fell apart. From the very beginning, we were meant to be in community.
Community is hard work. It isn’t, as my niece said lately, as easy anymore as zipping down the slide, sharing snacks, and being besties. Community takes intention, and time, and — this is the worst part — vulnerability. To find a safe place, you have to be a little unsafe first. It’s hard to take the first wobbly step toward friendship, not sure if someone will take your hand or let you fall. But someone has to go first. To get to relationship, we have to be willing to risk rejection. So how did it happen, that morning of crying and community?
There are, to begin with, two moms that made it happen. They decided we needed a local group of adoptive moms. So they made one. We meet at their houses. They make cinnamon rolls and egg casseroles and coffee. They kick their husbands and kids out when they host so we can sit and talk. None of this is convenient. They do it anyway. The rest of us find sitters, when we have to, or arrange for someone else to drop off the kids at the soccer game. Not every time — life sometimes foils the very best of intentions — but we are there because we need it.
It took a while. At the first meeting, we were all still using our company manners. The second meeting, too. I don’t remember exactly when we loosened up a little, but I do know it took some time. Some brave soul shared something a little scary, and the rest of waited for the shift in the universe. It didn’t come, and we decided we could maybe take a chance here and there too.
And it was a decision, or a series of small ones. We decided we could trust one another with our fears and our failings. I decided I could tell these women that I didn’t know what to do and I was afraid that every choice I could think of was wrong.
We aren’t there to solve one another’s problems. We’re just there to be together. We’re there to remember that not one of us is doing this alone.
Carol Zollinger lives and writes on a small farm in northeast Ohio, where she and her husband Paul raise beef cows and small boys. You can find more of Carol’s work at The Circus is Here. If you like what you see, sign up for her email newsletter so you don’t miss any future posts!
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