Living in Community

Community living is hard to do. I won't be the last person you hear it from if you know people who live in a real community. I am not talking about a community with neighborhoods where you have to share sidewalks and yards, or even the same stairs in an apartment complex, but a community that depends on each other every day to function and the kind you also can't get away from when you have your moments. It is very different than living with your family. It's so much harder. With your family you have to love them, and you do no matter what. You fight about clothes, food, the remote control, whose turn it is to take the dog on a walk, nagging each other about cleaning up. You get pissed at one another and then tomorrow is another day. With family you don't hold grudges so easily and you actually don't have to be so considerate all the time (just some of the time). You can get mad and it's normal. Things almost always go back to normal. But what do you do when all of this and more happens with the people who are not your family?

It doesn't look the same. You have to be considerate all the time. You have to know that there are about 10 people that have to be aware of one another's feelings all the time. In work, in play, in love, in secret. A community doesn't function like a family because you have to learn to love in spite of the complex things that can screw each other up. You have to learn to forgive because it won't be just another day tomorrow. It's not like you can just wake up and pretend as if nothing ever happened like you can with your family. Community living breaks you apart so much it's healthy. But it doesn't always look or feel like it's healthy.

A few months back I was talking to a friend and it is one of the most memorable conversations I think I have ever had. I remember every part of it, which is really rare with my memory. But I remember all of it because it was so profound and he had so much to say from a world away perspective (literally). The most insightful thing we talked about was community. He didn't become a Christian until he was in college so he has lived most of his life without God and can see a lot more clearly life without Christ. When he came to know the Lord and surrendered his life he noticed something right away. He said this

 

"You know the one thing that everybody gets when they come to know God is community. I have always had my buddies that would do anything for me you know, but that was not community. Not the kind of community you get when God is in your world.  No matter what happens in life the one thing Christ gives us is other people. Christ was never even alone in his ministry and we certainly are not called to it either. We are not meant to carry this life alone. We may have to for seasons of time, but we will actually still have people around us. And that is what's SO beautiful about Christianity. You can go anywhere in the world and find that you have a brother or sister you never knew existed."


I think about this part of the conversation all the time. It is a very pivotal thing for me in my life right now within my own community God has given me, in abundance. There is a lot that I have to carry and go through right now and I am surrounded by the people that are supposed to help me through it. A lap to cry on or a person I can run to for secrets. Yet there are people within my community at the same time who have been directly apart of that tearing down aspect God has allowed in my life. It's to grow me and mature me, I hope. 

But growing and maturing is hard. It's the hardest thing I have ever done. Honestly, I feel like I have been through 10 years of life experience just within 7 months. It's almost stupid how much I have been through emotionally and physically. And the phases to "get through it all"... well, that my friends is what will be included in the book. At the end of the day it all comes back to community. The good and the hard. It's true what they say, that oxymoron... "I can't live with it, but I can't live without it". God I want to know how to live with community better. Show me how to live and learn.