Life Group

In our church we have something called "Life Groups". They used to be called care groups, which is a much more familiar term, but have since changed. Not gonna lie...I haven't been a fan of calling it a life group. However I was thinking about it this week and my perspective has changed a bit.

We joined a life group I think it was just over two years ago with three other couples. We knew one out of the three couples well, and the other two pretty much not at all. It's amazing how quickly the bonds grew and I came to call them all some of our closes friends. One of the main topics of conversation for the first year was babies...who was going to be first?

I was the first to get pregnant with Tyler at the beginning of June. (Competitive much?) Christmas time rolled around Jeff and Jen announced their exciting news. Tyler was born in March and that same night Joel and Dominique announced THEIR exciting news - and were due within 4 days of Jeff and Jen. (How's that for timing??) Then just a few months later Daniel and Alisa gave us their news...baby number 4 was on the way. Since then, Maelle Ava and Isaiah James have been born and we are just waiting for Funk baby due in January.

Since Tyler was born quite a bit before the other two, our friends have spent quite a bit of time getting to know him and love him. As far as he (and we) are concerned, they're family. He knows them just about as well as he knows our blood relatives. However I'm not going to lie, I have been preparing myself for when the new babies were to be born as I assumed Tyler would be lost in the shuffle a little bit. It would make sense as there were more babies to love, and they would be their own. I was so wrong.

It is an amazing thing to watch someone else love your child. I can't quite describe it. It really does feel like our group is our family. The new babies have been born and are LOVED. It actually felt weird how much their births affected me. I was away for Maelle's birth and I cried in the middle of a group of people when I got the news because I wasn't around to greet her. When Isaiah was born I couldn't sit still until I held him. After the first time I held him I couldn't get his face out of my mind. I have watched the rest of our group love each child and continue to love ours. Us girls have started getting together for breakfast once a week and it's so much fun to have our kids together and anticipate the fourth on the way. It doesnt' matter much to me who is holding Tyler as I know he's perfectly happy with any of them. Maelle was sleeping so Jen read books to Tyler. He wouldn't go to sleep so he Alisa took him and played with him.

I could go on, but where I was really going with this post is focusing on the term "life" group. prepare for cheese ball
This group has become so life giving. We were talking about it the other day how our kids better learn to get along because they are going to be friends for life whether they like it or not. But that's just it - family doesn't always get along, but you know you're in it for the long haul. Tyler won't have blood cousins for a long time, but Isaiah, Maelle, and baby Funk will be his family. We are so blessed.