Day 8: Lesson in Life

 

What lesson in life are you grateful for?

I am grateful that my parents taught me to be a joiner.  We moved from the small town of Norfolk, NE to the bigger town of Lincoln, NE the summer before I started 9th grade.  I was leaving behind a beloved best friend and a community of familiar people, and starting in a new town at an age when most people already have their friend groups.  My parents immediately signed me up for a softball team, started us in a church youth group, and helped me sign up for tryouts for the school volleyball team.  Some of these activities (volleyball) took more than others (softball), but they were all extremely helpful towards the main goal:  I knew people when I walked in to school that first day.  Despite the fact that I was the new girl, and in a really dorky and awkward phase to boot, I had people saying hello in the halls and I had a group to sit with in the cafeteria on that first day.  A couple of these people eventually became my best friends.

This lesson is helpful to me, in particular, because I have a shy and introverted personality.  Getting together with people I don't know well, or in big groups, is always the harder choice.  On any given day, it's always easier to just stay home with my nose in a book or go for a solitary run than to get together with a group of unfamiliar people.  But we all need people, and we all need connection.  And sometimes life takes you to different communities, different schools, different jobs, or different churches where you don't immediately have any social connection.  Even though the process of going to gatherings with unfamiliar people sometimes feels difficult and awkward, and even though it doesn't always result in immediate deep friendships, I'm grateful that my parents taught me that as a general rule it's worth it to be a joiner.