If you want deep friendships fast, move.

On acquaintances unboxing your underwear.

This one’s underwear and bras. Where do you want these?”

30% embarrassed but also 70% sure I desperately needed help, I directed a teenager from my church small group who I had hardly ever had a conversation with where to put my bin of underwear in my closet.

I was bouncing a baby, wrangling a toddler, and trying to put together our new house so it was at least semi-livable for our family of four.

I needed all the help I could get. So when the family who hosts our Friday night small group happily offered their time to help us unpack, I replied with a relieved, “yes please.”

All my life, I’ve usually been one to tough it out and politely decline offers of help, especially from people I barely know with tasks that feel kind of awkward and vulnerable.

But if mothering has taught me one thing, it’s to stop being stupid and accept the help.

In this particular instance with the moving and the underwear, I accepted their offer out of total necessity.

But I soon realized what I had been missing out on all my life—before I started surrendering to getting awkward with people I knew:

true friendship.

In my quest to appear as normal and un-awkward and non-vulnerable as possible (ironically, to try and make friends), I was missing out on the best kinds of relationships.

Because, at least in my recent experience, starting a true, deep, alive, hilarious, safe, meaningful friendship always feels a little awkward at first.

What I’m trying to say is that sometimes, vulnerability in friendship will feel like acquaintances unboxing your underwear (or maybe, they actually will be).

If you do a quick online search, you’ll find an alarming (but probably not surprising) number of stats about how Gen Z is the loneliest generation. And most of us don’t even have to search it to know it. We feel it in our bones.

We are lonely.

Deep down, we all want people we can bare our souls with. We want people who understand us. We want people who laugh at our jokes. We want people who encourage our dreams. We want people who lovingly call us out when we’re being sucky. We want people to make last-minute plans with. We want people we can text because we’re one egg short for a recipe. We want people who can meet us at Home Depot on a Saturday morning because we’re planting a garden and need two car-fulls of dirt and mulch and petunias.

The wild truth is that we actually do want awkward relationships!! Because vulnerability feels awkward!!

But we know in our souls that deep friendship is what we were made for.

We’ll never experience friendships that feel like home until we put ourselves out there in a way that feels a little awkward.

So enough with the small talk!

We’re all over that! Truly!

Let’s get into some deep shit on the first coffee date!

Let’s stop being scared of rejection and just invite them over!

Let’s make friendship bracelets!

Let’s ask for accountability around hard things!

Let’s bring cookies to our neighbors!

Let’s ask for help to clean out our garage!

Let’s exchange numbers with people we meet at the park!

Let’s LIVE FULLY ALREADY in this area of friendship!!

Because gosh dang it, life is too short and too hard to not have friends who will help you unbox your underwear.

Sarah

p.s. If you want to dive deeper into the power and importance of friendship, the book Made for People by Justin Whitmel Earley just rocked my world. Highly recommend.

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