Quote from Downton Abbey…didn’t watch all of it, but I get the sentiment.

I feel like my life has been divided into a few sections:
1. Growing up in LA, school, work, long distance relationship, marriage, and moving up to…
2. The Bay Area for 12 years, buying our first house, mental health and work, involvement in church, developing relationships with those in the workplace/church/extended family, and ultimately leading to moving back to SoCal to…
3. Buying a house in Camarillo to be closer to family, working remotely, navigating how to take care of said family members when they’ll need more care, making new friends in a new environment, getting plugged into a new church and learning how to balance our time/energy/money in a sustainable way.

These sections of our life look a little distinct since they are in different locations, and they should. They are filled with different situations, life choices, peoples, etc, but…I don’t think that exactly means that they can’t intersect. When I lived in SFV with my parents, I would come up to the Bay Area to visit Anson. When I was in the Bay Area, I would fly down to see my parents and friends like Gina, Cindy, Weber, Crescentia, and Junior. We now live in Camarillo, and while it’s still in SoCal, it’s a little bit away from where we grew up. If we want to see people, we will still have to drive to them.

If we lived in SFV, it would make it more convenient to see people that we knew…but…truthfully, we have grown apart from most people that we knew. I do think we made the right decision in moving here. SFV is just way too hot in the summer and we would be miserable for months every year. Camarillo has great weather, good infrastructure, is well run, MIGHT have a Costco someday, not as many people (and hope to keep it that way), and we honestly were able to buy our dream house. We’ve looked on Redfin and no other house matches this one. We have made some friends in our new church in Thousand Oaks and don’t always have to drive to TO since we’ve been hosting our small group. Raymond, Steve/Shirley, and James/Char have visited us, and Cindy will be coming next week to stay over on the weekend. We’ve met some Bay Area friends in LA (Eleanor/Jeff, Yeh family, Emily/Kevin, Jo-Ann), and are going to see Mark/Jenn in a few weeks when they come to TO.

It is probably normal to drift away from people especially if you aren’t able to live life together in the same place. I understand why Gary wants our small group to meet every week since he wants the group to have fellowship/socialization and grow closer to each other…but if you have those bonds, you don’t necessarily have to see each other THAT much. And if you do that, it shrinks your social bandwidth for your other relationships, which I do NOT want to lose.

When we do visit SFV, I’ve made time to eat with Gina, Weber, and Crescentia. We are able to talk to people we knew at CCAC or New Life when we have visited, and I don’t really see that changing in the near future. When we visited the Bay Area, we caught up with church friends, extended family, and coworkers. I’m hoping that we can visit at least once every year or two. We’ve had virtual meals with both sets of parents and Anson’s extended family. Because of the rain this week, we did virtual meals with Randy/Eva and Ruth/Albert and were able to catch up with each other’s lives and talk about some spiritual things to help spur one another on. One good thing that came out of COVID was a normalizing of virtual gatherings. We just need to have the intention to reach out and keep up our relationships.

I’m probably rambling…I guess to tie this in with the title of this post…regardless of where we are in the present, whether in SFV, Santa Clara, or Camarillo, relationships with the people that matter to me are the memories that I want to cherish. Yes, it may take some work to keep them going, but isn’t that how it should be? I don’t have to wait for others to reach out, and it’s not like no one has. There have been people who have come to see us even though we are a little further away, and technology has also made our world a little bit more accessible…use it for good!