Chloe Langr - Sisterhood: Giving and Receiving the Gift of Friendship

Giving and Receiving the Gift of Friendship

CHLOE LANGR

Except where noted, the Scripture citations used in this work are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright 1965, 1966, 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Copyright 2022 by Chloe Langr

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Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750; www.osv.com: 1-800-348-2440

ISBN: 978-1-68192-722-0 (Inventory No. T2594)

1. RELIGIONChristian LivingWomens Interests.

2. FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPSFriendship.

3. RELIGIONChristianityCatholic.

eISBN: 978-1-68192-723-7

LCCN: 2022930619

Cover and interior design: Lindsey Riesen

Cover and interior art: AdobeStock

P RINTED IN THE U NITED STATES OF A MERICA

To Mary, Hayley, Sarah, and Kelly for receiving my story and giving me the invaluable gift of your friendship.

And to Maeve and Ada Im in awe watching your friendship blossom.

In this house,

all must be friends,

all must be loved, all must

be held dear,

all must be helped.

St. Teresa of vila

Do you remember how simple it was to make and keep girlfriends when you were young? All you had to do was wear the same pair of tennis shoes as a classmate and you were set automatic best friends forever. But the further we are from kindergarten classrooms and recess camaraderie, the more complicated friendships with other women seem to become.

During college, I was blessed with a beautiful group of friends who encountered and accompanied me for four years. For the first time in my life since early grade school, friendships with women were totally joyful and life-giving. But after I graduated from college, my girlfriends werent just down the street or in the local coffee shops, waiting to share inside jokes and encourage me when I was struggling. Instead, we were spread out throughout the country (and the world!) and weeks, months, and eventually years stretched in between our formerly regular heart-to-heart conversations. The intentionality that friendship requires as an adult hit me like a ton of bricks.

To top it off, I was a transplant in a new city. I was only a few months into the vocation of marriage, settling into a new home, and starting a new job. I often wondered if I would ever be able to make and maintain friendships in this new season of life I felt like I was in kindergarten all over again. In fact, if Im being totally honest with you, the idea of having fulfilling, wholesome, and holy sisterhood in that season of life seemed impossible.

While my husband quickly hit it off with long-time college buddies who ended up in the same town after graduation, and fit in seamlessly with our new parish community, I was left with a longing for authentic friendship with women that I just couldnt seem to figure out. I almost started commenting on random strangers shoes when I stopped in for an espresso at our local coffee spot to see if my old friendship making tricks would pay off again. After all, you can never underestimate the power of a stylish ankle boot to spark a connection. But I was left exhausted. The easy way out seemed to be swearing off establishing new friendships, and just hobbling my friendships from college along, checking in with people every so often despite the miles between us.

Going to events without anyone I knew was so far out of my introverted comfort zone. Small talk was awkward for me, and I never knew quite what to say. While everyone on social media seemed to have their #GirlTribe, I floundered. I burned with jealousy when friends posted pictures of game nights, trips to local wine dives, and girls vacations that I longed to be included in. I ached for an invitation, to know that someone was thinking of me, remembering me, wanting to invest in a friendship with me. Even though I knew friendship with women could be good, I just wanted to call it quits.

Lets be real: These days, growing in intentional friendship with other women is more challenging than ever. And this follows a broader societal trend, as friendship in general becomes increasingly elusive. Some people today experience a total lack of close friendships in their lives. While our Facebook friend list continues to grow and we connect over the photo grid of Instagram, research finds that two out of five people today admit that their relationships arent meaningful, and one in five say that theyre lonely defining themselves as socially isolated.

Were facing the irony of being hyperconnected, yet more solitary than ever before. We can list off our friends breakfasts from their Instagram stories, recall their vacations thanks to Facebook, and laugh at what feel like inside jokes on Twitter. But when was the last time we had an intentional conversation about their day with these same friends, listening to their story instead of watching it on our phones?

As a modern society, our loneliness has reached epidemic levels.

Different seasons of life can exacerbate this loneliness. Seasons of singleness, especially when it feels like everyone and their sister is engaged or having babies, can leave you feeling like a very lonely party of one. Yet marriage and motherhood can usher in a different experience of loneliness. Cross-country moves or sharing a calendar with your spouse can make keeping those connections with friends difficult. You might feel alone in your experience of motherhood, exhausted by late nights and early mornings with little people and hungry for an adult conversation about something other than the latest episode of a PBS Kids show. And regardless of your state of life, living through a world pandemic, enduring months of lockdowns, and keeping our physical distance made that ache for friendship and community even more acute.

But physical isolation is not a prerequisite for a desire for deeper, meaningful conversation and communion. Some of us are surrounded by women who we count as friends, but we want to take things to the next level of intentional friendship. How can we patiently navigate the journey from discussions about the weather to heart-to-heart conversations about the big questions in life and more importantly, how do we know which friends to go deeper with? And when we feel the nudge to take the courageous leap of opening up in healthy vulnerability, how do we resist the urge to smile and claim that everything is fine even though were longing for someone to ask us how were