When Mr. Right and I sit down with couples who are planning to get married, we always tell them that finding good couple friends is one of the best things you can do for your marriage. I’m not kidding – research supports it, and my heart can attest to it. It takes awhile – when we got married, most of our friends were single, and so we had my friends and his friends and a few “our” friends, but very few couples that we could do life with.

And so we prayed. And prayed. And prayed. And man, has God blessed us richly. If you haven’t found “your” people yet, may I suggest looking at church? Church is messy and I’ll admit, there are some people there who are hard to love. But there are also some people – just like you – who are willing to do life with you, to know your junk and love you anyway, to be there when your “I just had a baby” hormones are out of control and you need someone to talk you down off the ledge, to pray for you, to see you without any makeup on and not care one bit, to laugh with you – and at you – so life seems less serious.

We found our tribe at church, in our Sunday School class. They are a bunch of messy people with J-U-N-K, and I absolutely adore them. ADORE.

This past weekend six couples from our class headed down to a lake house with just one rule: NO KIDS ALLOWED. Grownups only. It was awesome.

Here’s how our weekend went down:

Friday night:

• Drive two hours out of town, listening to podcasts and enjoying great shoulder-to-shoulder time with the spouse.
• Eat dinner at a restaurant at 8:00 (y’all, if we eat past 6:00 these days, we feel like we’re living on the edge). It was CRAZY.
• Stay up super late playing games.
• Laugh and laugh and laugh and (maybe sort of) binge on cookies.

Saturday:

• Sleep late. Like, really late. Like, until almost 8:00. Feel like a million bucks.
• Sit around and make breakfast.
• Talk. Laugh. Eat.
• Sit in rocking chairs in a screened-in porch and stare at the lake.
• Watch your crazy husband jump into the crazy cold lake. Because he’s THE BEST.
• Talk. Laugh. Eat.
• Discuss doing something productive, like going into town to shop. Then decide to ditch the plans and take naps. OH GLORIOUS NAPS.
• Talk. Laugh. Eat.
• Sit around a campfire eating s’mores and laughing ’til our cheeks hurt.
• Stay up late playing games, and (maybe sort of) binge on cake balls, chocolate cake, and leftover cookies.

Sunday:

• Sleep late. Again. Like rockstars.
• Sit around and make breakfast.
• Talk. Laugh. Eat.
• Go home. Get kiddos. Go back to reality.

To my tribe: thank you for refreshing my soul. For being good listeners and encouragers. For giving me so many “me, too” moments. For being awesome and laid back and FUNNY and really good cooks. And for making me feel loved.

Let’s do it again, okay? #standingroomonly