The Pope Understands…
I’m indifferent on Pope Francis. I’m thankful for his use of a large platform to bring Jesus to the center of the universe, but overall I’m not a big follower. After his visit to the United States I began to see summaries of all the things he touched on in his speeches and one stood out to me. His commentary on moving:
“…I know that it is not easy to have to move and find a new home, new neighbors and new friends. It is not easy.
At the beginning it can be hard, right? Often you have to learn a new language, adjust to a new culture, even a new climate. There is so much to learn! And not just at school. The good thing is that we also make new friends, we meet people who open doors for us, who are kind to us. They offer us friendship and understanding, and they try to help us not to feel like strangers. To feel at home. How nice it is to feel that.”
As a coaching family, “move” is always on the short list of things we just do. Looking back on my almost 11 years being a coach’s wife, I have determined that we have physically moved our belongings into a new home seven times. This is probably average, I know many women who can count at least one move per year if not more.
It’s easy to overlook this part about our lives because it can be considered a normal activity, but in the midst of the move, there is chaos, heartbreak, literal breaks (goodbye cereal bowls), loss of whole boxes and items, and uncertainty all while experiencing an undercurrent of peace. I say peace because whether we are forced to move or choose to move we know it’s what we do and this is just the next stop on the adventure of the coaching life.
The Pope is right — it is hard to move and there is so much to learn: where to go to school, where to attend church, who should be the friends we pursue, unique cultures, and so much more. There are so many threads of our lives that we work hard to keep untangled. Address changes, finding doctors, and finding service providers from hair dressers to oil changes to lawn services are all so overwhelming in the midst of unpacking, finding necessities and getting the kids enrolled in school — all while our husband is usually elbow deep in paperwork, travel, and just anything to do with the job.
The Pope is right — the beauty of finding new friends, seeing the trail of forever friends you have all over the country, and experiencing kindness from people who are strangers, yet make us feel like friends, is the best way to see the sting of the negative start to fade. This kindness allows us to begin to be willing to put those roots down deep — if we are willing — and see them hard to pull up when it’s time to move again.
This experience has made it easier for me to understand the need to find a way to love my neighbor and jump into the social deep end of the communities we join. I see the need to be welcoming as much as my time (and my four year old) allows to the new people to our town. Knowing the feelings of unknown and unwelcome they may experience from the start of their time here has made me empathetic to the need to find a group to belong with. I don’t just experience the kindness Pope Francis described but I try to make the effort to show it to others.
We don’t have to be coaching families to provide this love and kindness. I look at a couple of my closest friends and see this living example. Julie is the kind of person that likes to create social experiments in her home she invites random couples over to eat and hang out and see if it works. As a new member to the community I was invited to be a participant in one of these experiments. In this I found one of my best friends, Ashleigh. At first glance we probably would have never really had a platform to become close but because of Julie and her kindness to me and my family within our first month in her town, I have a lifelong set of friends who I continue to keep up with even after 3 moves.
I encourage others to step out, find a way to pull others in, create your own kind of social experiment if only for the purpose of showing others love and kindness and to welcome them to town. It doesn’t mean you become best friends, but it means you make the sting of moving from all that is familiar fade much faster for that family. I agree with you Pope Francis, how nice it is to feel that.
