Friendships as an adult are a very tricky thing to handle. I think we as women sometimes take things out of context. We think that if someone doesn’t immediately drop everything they are doing when we ask them to hang out that person is in fact rejecting us… Or if we ask a few times and they can’t make it, that they must have been “blowing smoke” when they said they wanted to hang out…
But here’s the deal… when we were single, in our 20’s, or even married but had no children, things were different. Our schedules were our own. We were able to go to dinner or coffee on a whim. We were able to do what we wanted with our time. But having kids changes things.
It changes things in many ways for the good and many ways that are just different. And our time is one of those things that is different.
Let’s be clear, this is not one of those posts where we lament that motherhood “takes things away” because it adds WAY more than we lose… But lets also see it for what it is… different.
So we need to react different. We need to give each other grace when it comes to time. We need to give ourselves grace when it comes to time. We no longer have the option for dropping everything because our friend is having a bad day. We have to reschedule 10 times because we have these “adult” responsibilities that take priority over what we “want” to do. Kids get sick. Husbands pick up extra jobs to pay the bills. Grandmas need someone to take them to the doctor. Babysitters cancel (or we can’t afford to pay someone to watch the kids). Etc.
We shouldn’t have to worry about us hurting our friends feelings. When we became mothers… life changed, friendships changed, so lets rally around one another and UNDERSTAND instead of getting upset or avoiding someone because its getting tough to fit things into a schedule.
We need to be confident in ourselves and in who we are. So keep asking that friend out to coffee… I PROMISE… She REALLY wants to go.