Let me start by saying I am not an extrovert.  If an extrovert is expressive and outgoing, then that’s often me.  But I also let calls go to voicemail for reasons even I’m not sure of.  I’d rather communicate in writing whenever I’m able.  And yet, in social situations, I can be engaging, gregarious, and even have fun doing it.  Before we moved to Tennessee, I had regular dates with myself that are on my calendar as “Christina’s Time.”  Sometimes I spent this time with a friend over drinks downtown, but more often I spent it with my laptop at a coffee shop, or getting lost in a bookstore.

I always miss my Daniel when he is away, but there is a part of me that longs for those hours after bedtime in a quiet house, just me, a candle and a fireplace and my words—a combination of the heard, the written and the read.  My days always start better when I am up first, early and alone.  On these days as I walk the hills with my iPod or open blinds and brew coffee, I have time and space to think over the day, to breathe deeply and prepare.  To move, to stretch, to read, to plan.  Before everyone needs me.

But when we moved away from our family, to a place where we knew no one, there was nothing restorative about that kind of solitude.  I learned I needed community—if not friends, if not confidantes—a village.  People who understood my station in life, if not yet me.  I had thought this would come first in the form of church.  And strangely, we’ve been here seven months and that’s still not the case (though I think it’s getting closer).

I know “church” is a word that doesn’t make everyone feel warm or welcome or loved. And I really do get it.  For years, as a pastor’s kid,  I saw the church from the inside, and it often wasn’t pretty. Thank goodness God and love are not confined to the houses we've built for them.

I’ve been in Baptist churches, a Pentecostal church, non-denominational churches, between churches, and on the outskirts, which is where I’ve found myself lately.  Though we have become regular attenders of a particular church, that’s been it.  I’ve never been hung up on the physical spaces—having attended churches in so many forms—but that’s about what it’s been for us so far here.  A place to go.  And that is all.

In Baltimore, more often than the place we went on Sunday, Church happened on a weeknight. We met in noisy, crowded kitchens over collaborative meals that were usually ill-planned but always seemed to be the perfect mix, always seemed to be enough.  We met in good times and sadness; we brought questions and doubts, many that never found answers.  We were so very different.  But together, we were the best kind of family. We chose to come together; we chose to stay together.  We chose to show up for each other--for our families-- on birthdays and bad days, for new babies, hurt babies, lost babies. In times of mourning and loss, on first days and moving days.  We miss them most days.

Ronald Rollheiser says, “Church  is … walking to God within a community. To attempt to make spirituality a private affair is to reject part of our very nature and walk inside of a loneliness that God himself has damned.”

I’m not sure this is meant to be taken quite as literal as it can seem.  I think there is need and room for both private and communal spirituality.  I can’t always reconcile my craving for solitude and space to dwell and ponder with my need to know and be known, my desire to process out loud.

This doesn't look the same for everyone, I know.  For me, lately, it has meant finding community with similarly disoriented women, and with others who are surer of their steps. It’s meant finding people to listen to and be authentic with, even if I’m not always sure I’ll be accepted. Just now, through our church, it’s starting to mean our family is finding individuals and families to share our meals and stories and lives with.

We still have a place we enjoy going on Sunday mornings. It’s a place that welcomes anyone, no matter their background or attire. We are finding it’s a place where people believe everyone matters and they actually live that out, here and all over. We still believe this belonging is important (and if you live near us, you can sit with us any time). 

But I have lived the last seven months in a different kind of Church…one where we seek and ask and walk to God together. We listen to heartaches, offer hope, sit in stillness, share laughter, wisdom and time, make food for the weary, offer and accept kindnesses to and from near strangers, and care for each other’s babies.

I still think it’s hard to be vulnerable. Scary to be authentic. Lately I have relished stolen moments writing alone at my new favorite coffee house while Daniel stays with the girls. I still value my solitude. But there’s just no reason to live unknowing and unknown. The upside-- being loved well and learning to do the same-- is just too great.  Here's hoping we find our people, however beautifully flawed we all may be.

Maybe it’s a little late to talk about Valentine’s Day.  But, it seems, that’s just how I do things.  Yesterday, when we called my mom on her birthday so the girls could sing to her, my youngest yelled, “Sorry it’s late!” at the conclusion of the song. She is unaccustomed to our actually being on time.

Though it’s entirely contrived, we usually celebrate Valentine’s Day, but I can’t remember the last time we did it on the 14th.  Before kids, maybe? The last several years Daniel has been traveling, so it’s usually pre or post, and often at home. Once it was at a Bertucci’s on the Jersey Turnpike. Once it ended in The Great Vaseline Incident of 2011. That was awesome.

So I was pretty surprised when Daniel called from California last week to a) tell me he’d actually be home for Valentine’s Day, and b) ask if I wanted to go on a date, since he had already booked a sitter.  The answer to a question like that, of course, is yes.

Valentine’s Day, like so many things as my children are getting a little older, is taking on new meaning.  I’ve never really cared for the manipulation of the holiday, but as I discussed it with my five-year-old, I saw it differently.  If it is, as I told her, a day about showing love to our friends and family then what’s not to like? 

We decorated mailboxes for each of us, about a week before, and I set up a station for them to make cards at their leisure.  As a result, this week I have vacuumed the rugs no fewer than four times to try to combat the unintended confetti that results when 3 and 5-year-olds cut construction paper and doilies to make “Valentimes.”  They learned to recognize a raised flag as a sign that they had “mail” and excitedly checked each day. 

Mirabella and I made heart-shaped crayons for her classmates and she painstakingly signed nearly 40 cards for her friends.  We made olive oil and beeswax lotion for her teachers and placed it in tins she took great care picking out. She got to go on a date the night before with her Daddy, while Emerie and I made heart-shaped sugar cookies and a heart-themed lunch for her. That morning, she couldn’t wait to get to school.  That afternoon, after a morning of running errands, Emerie and I sat down to lunch.  I felt kind of guilty that she wasn’t having a more “special” day, but she said, “Mommy, dis is a GWEAT day. Dank you for coming to lunch with me.” And of course, I melted.

After school we finished presents for Daniel and made chocolate covered strawberries and talked with neighbors who came by to deliver Valentines. We got ready for the babysitter, with heart plates and napkins and homemade pizza, then I rushed off to get dressed.

When the babysitter arrived, she was not the one the girls and I were expecting, thanks to Daniel’s mix up, so we all called her the wrong name, repeatedly.  We gave her flowers and chocolates and a card addressed to our other babysitter. 

A bit embarrassed but excited, we headed out for our date.  Which could hardly have gone worse, from an external perspective.  Though I had done my due diligence, we were surprised by a very limited prix-fixe menu, in which the prix was far too high.  Nearly every option featured shellfish, to which Daniel is allergic. We were not noticed for nearly 15 minutes after we sat down.  After that, all of the courses we were compelled to order were wrong, late, or cold. I lost track of how many times our waitress apologized.  At the tail end of a six-week cycle of sickness that had plagued all of us, I had completely lost my voice.  We both leaned as far as we could across the table in an attempt to communicate, and I resorted to charades motions and sign language.  We found the humor, but it wasn’t easy given the amount of money we were paying and the treat this was  supposed to be.

When we arrived home, toys were still strewn about and the babysitter was nowhere to be found, which could only mean that the children were not asleep.  Upstairs I found them both crying, a diaper the dog had eaten torn to shreds on the bathroom floor, and the mortified babysitter standing in the middle of it all.  “I am so sorry,” I mouthed.

I calmed the kids down, found the lost teddy bear responsible for inciting the meltdown, whispered them a story, and Daniel saw our poor babysitter out. We cleaned up the mess and sat down briefly before just deciding to call it a night.

I thought back to the weekend.  Before I had known we would be able to go out for Valentine’s Day, I bought a Groupon for a three-course, gourmet meal for two from a food delivery service. We had put the kids to bed early, bought a bottle of fantastic Spanish wine, prepared dinner together and ate off china and crystal by candlelight. I broke our no-shoes-in-the-house rule because sometimes you just have to wear heels.  The food was good and hot.  There was a dog at my feet, toys on the floor in the next room and children upstairs.  And it was perfect.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice and sometimes essential to go out. I’ll never argue otherwise.  Sometimes it’s the easiest way to “see” each other again.  But in this case, we were reminded of something that, in our excitement, we might have forgotten, if but for a moment.  In the wisdom of Dave Matthews, “Turns out not where but who you’re with that really matters.”