Paul Johnson... for a short while

YAH Married people need friends too!

When have I ever called you about something and then said you couldn't go?? :)

Hey Paul, long time reader, seldom commenter here.

I think everyone appreciates being invited. All too often I'm told of things that certain people are doing and not invited to come along. Usually this comes up in the form of me asking what someone is doing, usually because I am looking for something to do! The reply is they are doing "this and that" with "so and so", and the unsaid idea is that they're not interested in being with me. I can turn this around on myself too. I'm not perfect. I forget people occasionally.

Whether or not this is the intention or not, I really don't care. You can intend to be the best fire-fighter in the world but if you sit on your butt and eat cheeto's you're a pathetic disgrace. Christians do this as much (if not more) than non-Christians I'm around, most likely because I'm around Christians more. Just because I know the Son of God doesn't mean it's not worth the effort. So I make this call to all Christians: let's seperate ourselves from the world, not only by intention but by ACTION.

Mike- I guess I meant to say that you are one that invites us. Sometimes our own circumstances prevent us.

Again the UNvitation happens when someone casually tells you what they are doing and then leaves making it pretty clear that they plan to do it without you.

Paul, I wonder if it's less because you are married and more because you are in full time support raising mode and people don't think you are "supposed" to be having fun with people?

I found something kind of similar to happen while I was doing MTD...people just assumed I was busy with support raising or that I wasn't allowed to hang out with people or whatever...so I didn't get invited to do as many things...and a certain aspect of that was true since I was almost always busy at night and I was trying not to "do ministry" as much.

I guess I say this also because I find that Tony and I receive more invitations than we can generally accept to do things (since we have a baby and like to take date nights and often need to go to bed early...we often can't do things with people that we would like to be doing)...so I don't think there is really a Rock wide bias against inviting married people to do things.

Granted, the first couple months we were married this might have happened more, but as we made it pretty clear we weren't going to hide out while being married, people started doing lots of inviting again...on continued thought maybe part of the problem is your intersection of being relatively newly married AND doing full time support raising...perhaps that is a socially lethal combination! :)

I think what I wish we had more of is not social opportunities in general but social opportunities with other married people. A lot of that is because of the lifestyle we have chosen as people doing college ministry, but I do wish we could hang out socially with other married couples more than once every few months.

I hope this long rant makes up a bit for almost never commenting...If it makes you feel any better I have around 50 blogs in my bloglines feed reader, and if I make one or two comments a week between all those blogs, that is doing well for me...so it isn't personal. I just usually only comment if it affects me personally in some way.

Jason and I have been talking about being in "marriedland." I used to think that married people grew a third ear or something... like I couldn't even communicate with them anymore. However, being on this side of the fence... it gets lonely at times. Especially when you come from living in a large household of girls and now all your time is with one boy. Don't get me wrong- I love being married! :) However, it is nice to know that you have friends. Amanda called us today and invited us to lunch with her, Amber and Bravo. You should have seen Jason and I as we were so excited to be invited somewhere!

If they grew a 3rd ear then wouldn't they be able to hear you better as opposed to worse? :)

Kirsten thanks for making my blog one of your comments this month. And I think you are somewhat correct in the "socially lethal combination" thingy.

Man- these posts are bring out the long comments. :)