Cold Showers.

You know that feeling when it's a cold winter night and you can't wait to take a hot, steamy shower before you snuggle under your warm covers?Ok, now how about that feeling when you get in the shower and instead the water keeps getting colder and colder and you inch to the H more, then an inch more, until you know that you probably have 20 seconds (at best) until you are bending to just rinse your hair because the water is so cold that you have goosebumps all over your body?No one likes a cold shower.Well, last night I had a cold shower and in that 20 seconds of scrambling (before I might as well have bathed in the frozen pond down the street)...I smiled.This was the best cold shower of my life.Why? Because I knew my roommate upstairs had just used all of the hot water.It's wacky, right? I do own this house and I do live in the basement, despite being the owner of this house, and I should want a hot shower in the house that I own. But there's something so refreshing about knowing I'm not doing life alone.Our house has been deemed "The Nest," probably because of the popcorn ceilings, but more likely because we are little birdies who are growing in this nest. I've already had a few birdies fly away, but two more flew right in. Now we're onto "The Nest 2.0." There's an ongoing joke that one day I will live in "The Nest 6.0" with just me and a bunch of cats...but I'm hopeful that I at least catch an allergy to cats before that plays out.We drink coffee together and buy groceries together and gawk over how short that girl's dress is on The Bachelor. "How was your day?"—a warm greeting after a day where it literally felt like -3 degrees outside.And all of that is great.But the best part is when we sit around and actually go deeper and deeper with each other. We confess the moments when we no longer desire to marry a wealthy business man, but that God has changed our hearts to desire a man with a worn-out Bible. We admit the times when the JCrew catalog comes and we want it straight in the recycling bin because materialism feels like a distant past.Or the darker moments when we want to punch the next person who says "Just be you." What does that even mean?We all have dreams of families that will carry us away from The Nest, but now is when we get to wrestle with how to get your laundry done in a 40-hour work week and why it costs $150 to get the registration renewed for your car. (Can anyone actually afford to live in this world?)Now is when we get to figure out why making friends at work (a good thing) has turned into constant gossiping—paralyzing and overwhelming. We fail to gain approval when we walk away, but we realize the deeper heart issue as we sink into the couch and spill about what she said and what he said and how we couldn't get away...or maybe that it felt so good to be snarky for just a moment.We live in a community that does weird things, like eat dinner together every Monday and has a house of guys that notices when your light bulb is burned out and just replaces it. Not everyone our age hangs out at the food bank as a "fun night out." And we don't do it for attention. We do it because life isn't meant to be lived alone.I can't wait for more of my food to go missing (who ate my peanut butter?) and my leggings to disappear from my laundry basket and to sit on the floor because my couch is so full of people watching a movie that I didn't even want to watch.I can't wait to mess up again, and have them remind me again and again of Jesus' grace—and to just see Him in their radiant smiles.And I most certainly cannot wait to take many more cold showers.It was a very Merry Christmas at The Nest 2.0!