{"id":9456,"date":"2025-12-30T15:14:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T15:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/?p=9456"},"modified":"2025-12-30T15:14:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T15:14:19","slug":"dear-friends-dont-wait-until-the-perfect-time-just-show-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/?p=9456","title":{"rendered":"Dear Friends, Don\u2019t Wait Until The Perfect Time\u2014Just Show Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOnce upon a time I was in my early twenties with no children, a job I could leave at work for the most part, a full night\u2019s sleep, and a partridge in a pear tree. When a friend would have a baby or someone got really sick, I would show up with my arms loaded full of home baked goodies, thoughtful cards, and meals to their exact liking. Honestly, I really thought this is what service to the people in my life should look like.<\/p>\n

Then I had my first baby, and another. This time the first one was only two and the second had colic. It was the hardest transition of my life.<\/p>\n

During this period, I completely stopped showing up with meals and loving my tribe in this way, not because I wasn\u2019t able to but because I didn\u2019t feel I could do the job justice. I felt what I would be able to offer wasn\u2019t good enough to bother with. I was so wrong.<\/p>\n

Now, I have three little boys, we live in a tiny house (like an actual tiny house, not just a small house), and our lives are full but so very happy. I\u2019m in my thirties now, I\u2019m older, more tired, and I\u2019ve been through enough in my life to learn the truth I wish I\u2019d known then.<\/p>\n

Are you ready? It\u2019s really profound\u2026 Just show up.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it, really. Just show up. When your friend\u2019s husband dies unexpectedly, when she has a baby, when she is going through a divorce, when her life is unraveling, she doesn\u2019t care if you baked the cookies from scratch and perfectly placed them on a platter.<\/p>\n

Show up (call first) in your socks with pizza. Honestly, I think showing up without your act perfectly together is probably more kind to the person who is going through hell.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A friend went through some of the hardest life changes you can go through last year. I got the call at 6 p.m., left my kids with my husband, and drove the 15 minutes to her house with my socks beautifully crammed into the Birkenstocks I\u2019d found near the door. My hair needed to be washed and I probably had a coffee stain on my sweatshirt.<\/p>\n

I got to the door and let myself in (we\u2019re close). I held her, loaded her dishwasher, read her kids a story and tucked them in, switched the laundry, and cleaned the front bathroom for guests. You see, earlier in my life I wouldn\u2019t have made it there for an hour because I felt it was important to make myself presentable and bring a Pinterest worthy meal. She didn\u2019t need Pinterest, she needed me, in all my socks with Birkenstocks imperfection.<\/p>\n

She needed me to meet her in the middle of her nightmare, to stand in the gap, and to sit at her table at 9:30 drinking hot tea and listening.<\/p>\n

Loving the people around you shouldn\u2019t wait until you can do it perfectly and beautifully. There\u2019s no trophy for best baked good drop off. There\u2019s nothing to be gained by keeping people from your realness.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the social media age we lost touch with the people close to us. We started comparing our private lives to everyone else\u2019s Instagram feed. We stopped being the village. We started fending for ourselves. Enough is enough.<\/p>\n

Life is beautiful but it can be so hard. We need people in our lives to show up and to love us in the midst of our tragedy. We need human interaction and we need pizza in our socks with good friends.<\/p>\n

We need the village. It was there for a reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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