I’m in a season of life when many of my close friends have young children. Inevitably, that has an impact on our friendships. It affects when we can spend time together, what we can do, where we can go, and what we talk about.

Some people might look in on the way that my friendships are different in this season and think that it’s a bit unfair on me. To put it bluntly, I’m regularly making sacrifices for the sake of other people. There are things I would love to do and places I’d love to go with my friends that we can’t. There are times when I’d like the chance to talk in-depth about something, but the presence of children or the tiredness with which they gift their parents renders that difficult. Some people might recommend I take a break from these friendships. Perhaps I should find some other friends to hang out with for a while and come back to these ones in a few years’ time.

But I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. For one thing, I think there are relational responsibilities in close friendship that we can easily overlook. But I also think that as a single guy, I would miss out if I withdrew. I’d miss out on at least two opportunities to learn about love.

Learning to love

I’m making sacrifices for my friends and their children, and sacrifice is the heart of love (John 15:13). Every time I accept one of the ways in which my friendships have been impacted by the arrival of children, I’m loving my friends. Facing these sacrifices – small as they usually are, in reality – gives me the opportunity to learn to love my friends, and their children, well.

And doing this changes me. It helps me to become less selfish. The discipline of regularly making sacrifices for the sake of others – of loving well – is something we have to practise and something we grow in as we do. People often observe that this can happen through parenting. When done well, parenting young children is one of the most powerful examples of the love of self-sacrifice. These little people arrive in families, causing huge upheaval and utterly unable to do anything for themselves, and parents, through relatively small, mundane actions, get to love them self-sacrificially moment after moment, day after day, year after year. Many people talk about how the self-sacrifice of parenting shapes them to be less selfish. As a single person, I get to experience a little bit of that through my relationships with friends who have young children.

Learning to be loved

But of course, it’s not all one way. My friends’ children bring so much good into my life. They help me switch off and have fun, they introduce me to a world of imagination that most of us adults have long left behind, they help me take myself less seriously, and they can make my day with a simple hug or moment of handholding.

But perhaps most powerfully, they teach me about love, and especially God’s love for me. I remember holding my goddaughter when she was very young. She was in discomfort and had been screaming in my face for quite a while, I think she had also thrown up on me a bit, but now she was lying fast asleep in my arms. I looked down at her and was almost overcome by the depth of love I felt for her. It seemed so unlikely in a sense; she hadn’t done anything much for me and what she had done that day wasn’t great.

In that moment, I felt God remind me that that is how he loves me. There are days when I throw up on him (metaphorically), and days when I scream in his face (not always metaphorically), and yet his promise is that he takes pleasure in me (Psalm 147:3), sings songs of delight over me (Zephaniah 3:17) and loves me with an immeasurable love that surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:18-19).

As I’ve sought to love well, God has used my friends’ children to teach me about his love for me.

The blessings of this season

The arrival of children into my friendships has made a big impact on my life. I’m sure many other single people will be able to relate. I know for some single people, the reality of friends having children can be very painful, highlighting as it can their own desire to have children. But while there can be challenges in this season of life, I’m convinced there are also opportunities for great blessings. So, to my friends’ relief (I hope), I’m not going to keep my distance for a few years. I’m going to throw myself into these friendships as an opportunity to learn about love.