After the Long, Hot Summer

Yesterday brought crisp air and a cooler slant of light across the fields. Fall is coming.

This summer brought great change in our lives, a time of transition from our five years in the Southwest to our new home in the deep South. In a way, it's a homecoming, because both my husband and I have spent years in the South, and our extended family is now only a day's drive away, instead of two or three.

Still, we have again moved to a town in which we have no immediate family or old friends. So this is a period of waiting, of patience, of trusting that our lives will grow into fullness in our new home.

It's not that our lives aren't already full of events: even now, we're juggling priorities and multi-tasking as much as we ever did in NM.

But what makes life full is relationships, and though my long-distance friendships continue, I feel the empty space where my local friendships once tied me to our community.

I've learned from many similar moves, however, that this will change. My experience in NM taught me some important lessons about how to go about making friends. I found that many of my most durable friendships came through shared activities. They weren't the kind of thing you could just go out and find overnight. So, I'm glad to be meeting lots of new people through my daughter's homeschooling co-op. These moms are all dedicated to education, and thus far I've found many of them to be confident, interesting women.

Where have you found your closest friends? Have you ever had to move and start over?