UNINVITED

“You have been set apart as holy to the Lord your God, and he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be His own special treasure.” -Deuteronomy 14:2

Being a young adult is fun.

Being a wife is amazing.

Being a mom is indescribable.

But what happens when you mix all three of those together? In my experience, being a young adult who is also a wife and a mom has been a little challenging at times. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life. Truly, I am so grateful to be called wife and mom. Being a wife and mom when you’re young can be a little difficult to navigate sometimes, though. Where do we fit in? We are still young, but we have different responsibilities than we did when we were just young adults in college. A lot of churches have young adult groups, but once you start having children it’s hard to find time to keep going to those young adult groups. Sometimes, they even start at bedtime!

So what do we do? How do we have and find community when we are in such a different stage of life and in throes of motherhood? These are questions that I’ve thought about and brought to prayer many times in the last almost four years since becoming a wife and then a mom. This blog post is for anyone, and I think it’s especially for those of us who are young moms trying to navigate friendships and learning to find community during this season of child-rearing.

I couldn’t even count how many times I haven’t been invited to something where there were other women the same age as me; I would run out of fingers, ha! The reality is that this happens often. Candidly, I have spent a lot of time feeling hurt because I didn’t understand why I wouldn’t be invited. Time after time, I would see pictures of young adult women together and wonder, “Why wasn’t I invited? What’s wrong with me?” There came a point where I had to ask myself what my response would be. Would I continue to sit in my hurt? Would I allow myself to continue to be angry? Something had to change, and since I couldn’t control other people… That change had to be inside of me. I realized that I could continue to feel hurt or I could start believing truth over lies. Being uninvited hurts. God gave us emotions, but we cannot allow ourselves to sit in those negative emotions. The lies are that you are unseen, unwanted, and just simply not worth the invitation. The truth is that you were created by God for a purpose. He sees you. He knows you. You are invited to His table, and what an incredible honor that is!

As we sit with this truth, we need to invite our Father into the midst of our hurt and allow Him to give us our value. Your value does not come from those around you; it comes from Him- your Father who deeply loves you. If you are the one who seems to get forgotten or the one who feels uninvited, I encourage you to answer the invitation of your Heavenly Father who always has a place for you at the table. And I also encourage you to be like Him. Even when you don’t always have a seat at someone’s table, continue to keep making room for others at your table. When we choose to allow God to help us overcome our hurt, we are able to extend His grace to those around us.

And since you know what it feels like to be uninvited, what a beautiful thing it is to help someone feel invited and seen by you. We have an amazing opportunity to extend His love to those around us. Keep reaching your hand out to others and watch the fruit that comes from that.