What Would I Do Without Community?

It's been a great week and as much as I'd like to take most of the credit for it I cannot imagine how it would have happened without my amazing community of friends.


It's really hard (emotionally, mostly) to nurture a young marriage and raise a young family while being hundreds of miles away from your family. Irvin's family is in Atlanta and mine is in PA and DC and as a relatively new wife (3 years in August!) and the mother of a toddler and newborn I often think about the fact that my life is nowhere close to what I imagined it to be even 5 years ago.


I was sure that by the time I got married and started having children I would be settled somewhere in Central Pennsylvania and be under the helpful guidance of the amazing women in my family. Women who have raised vanloads of kids and thrived through decades of marriage. Women who love me so much that they'd offer to cook, clean, babysit - whatever they could do to make my life as a new mother easier.


I never thought I'd be living in New Orleans - an obnoxiously far drive from anyone who knew me as a Hayes. Yet here I am. And here is where I have found my NOLA family.



Since we started attending Castle Rock Community Church we have been blessed with amazing friends and strong community. Many of the members of CRCC are from places other than New Orleans so they understand this New Normal I have found myself in. They have come alongside me in this time of transition and propped me up. They have cooked, babysat, advised, prayed for, and loved us. Surely they don't know how much they've carried me in the last two weeks.

I will be forever grateful.