By Sarah Southern

The patterns of my life have been etched by the spaces I’ve inhabited. My husband and I are frequent movers, frequent seekers of new connections found within unfamiliar places. Every three to four years, we uproot, pack up, say tearful goodbyes to relationships that were just beginning to achieve a particular kind of depth. We set our sights on new places that become new homes in cities bursting with new people that already seem connected in their own ways. We stand on the periphery filled with the tension of mingling fear and excitement. 

Three years ago, we crossed half the country to make a new home in Denver, Colorado. We left a comfortable house on the border of South Carolina and Georgia for a tiny, one-bedroom apartment in an old building on a bustling city street. For the first time in my life, I walked from my home to coffee shops, breweries, the library, and the best sushi restaurant in the city. We sacrificed square footage for the convenience of across-the-street tacos and nearby parks.

Though we didn’t know anyone yet, we were beginning to feel a connection to place. On Wednesdays, the Methodists across the street gathered for impromptu live bluegrass in the yard. I’d open the windows as twangy melodies filled our little space. On Sundays, the streets swelled with local farmers, bakers, hot sauce makers, beer brewers, and a thousand competing colors and aromas. On snow days, I’d trudge half a city block for pan au chocolat croissants from the Japanese bakery. I delighted in the small luxury of a walkable area, even if friendships were slow to form. 

But in early 2020, just months after settling in and slowly adapting to a new environment, we began hearing rumors and reading news stories alerting us to a growing global pandemic. Lockdown happened quickly. Our street quieted. The Methodists stopped gathering; the farmer’s market and bakery temporarily closed. My husband still worked, but I was stuck at home, alone in a quiet apartment with increasingly loud thoughts and few local friends in a neighborhood that transformed from charming to something mirroring the vacant streets from The Walking Dead. 

…

In a digital, individualistic age, connectivity is already a hardship. We think we’re connected, but few of us practice the art of intentional listening and thoughtful communication. We text and post and tweet all day long, but our attention span is barely long enough to comprehend a headline. But time slowed down in those early months of 2020. And in the quiet, disconnected from the distractions of loud coffee shops and bustling farmer’s markets, we were forced to reevaluate our innate need to know and be known authentically. 

Social media was my saving grace in the upheaval of 2020. I’m aware, of course, of the irony considering social media can be the least authentic space imaginable. There’s a cacophony of voices, increasing ads and changing algorithms, a threat to still-developing brains, lurking catfishers…but behind the real accounts, are real people seeking authentic presence in a world where stealing words is easy and integrity requires diligence. In seeking and making sense of it all, many of us found each other, drawn to individual stories like whales to song. There are people I now call friends, whom I never would have met if not for the realm of Instagram. There are conversations that wouldn’t have happened, words that wouldn’t have been written without this tool that enabled me to discover the sacred bond of me-too-ness. I honed my writing in this limitless space and discovered I’d rather be dedicated to truth and my own formation than anything even hinting of influence.

C.S. Lewis wrote about the spiritual nature of friendships, how we tend to think we “choose our peers,” when, in reality, every single life event affects whom we’ll bump into or move next door to or sit across from—little moments are often the impetus for the formation of relationships. Friendship, he says, “is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” The digital landscape is no different with friendships affected by whom we follow or direct message or send a Voxer to. We have at our fingertip’s-reach millions of people whom we could potentially befriend. In the overwhelming nature of instant access, we can still discover individual peers. God reveals the beauties within these screen-shrouded humans to us through actual connection that may first transpire with a single shared emoji. As Lewis said, “A secret master of ceremonies has been at work.”

…

At the tail end of August 2022, I sat in a damp adirondack chair, surrounded by apple trees boasting their ripe bounties. The sky was hazy and the morning was crisp and cool. I held a mug of pour-over coffee, nursing an emotional hangover from a weekend filled with deep, mending conversations with gentle friends first met via an Instagram DM. 

After years of seeking connection in expected places, I’d found it in the unexpected. We clobbered our way through lonely isolation and formed friendships in digital oases. We united over love of craft, the art of good writing, the importance of dismantling tradition to find the buried heart of Christ. We grieved the death of certainty and welcomed burgeoning imagination.

Birds sang in every direction and the smell of damp earth filled my nostrils as my friend spoke a blessing over us beneath a slowly-lightening Washington sky. We are still healing, but healing in community. Even if small, even if rarely physical, it is humanly beautiful—the work of a God-who-smiles when he chooses us for one another.

Sarah Southern

https://sarahsouthern.substack.com/

Sarah Southern is a writer and freelance graphic designer, sourdough bread baker and weekend hiker. She and her husband, Jordan, currently live in Denver, CO, with their rescue pup Lucy.