Community

Well, well well... yes, here I am again!  Who would have thought I'd ever come back after such a long absence, right?  Well, I won't bore you with the details, but I got super busy and then I was indulging in a little recuperation, and now I'm finally starting to have some things brewing again that I actually want to toss out into the dialogue.  

As the title suggests, my mind is full of thoughts of community.

I think that I finally have an inkling of what community is supposed to be.  I knew that UCCC (our home church for those of you who don't know) was a good place for Beau and I, but in the last 6 months or so, I think we've begun to really enter in to a process of learning to live in authentic community and it's been the catalyst for some real change in our lives.

I think it all began with a breakthrough in my husband's life.  He had been struggling for a long time with something, and, through a purely generous act of our Lord, was granted freedom from it.  We've talked about it, and Beau is not able to explain why, now, after all the times he asked for the Lord to free him, his request was granted.  I'm starting to believe I understand why.  I think the Lord knew that right now the conditions were perfect for us to launch onto a new plane, and that this would let the genie out of the bottle, so to speak.    

Beau was wise enough (or perhaps granted wisdom enough) to know that having experienced this freedom, he needed to seal it into his life.  He confessed his struggles and sought out prayer and support, and ended up joining a group of men to meet weekly for prayer and community - there is that word again.  It just so happens that these men are truly Godly men.  It so happens that they are men who are strong enough to take my husband right where he is, with all the bumps and rough edges, and love him authentically.  

These men listen to what he has to say, and from what he shares with me, he really does lay it out there, and they take the ugly and the beautiful and dialogue with him about it.  They don't judge him when his feelings and reactions are sinful, but instead try to find the root behind it, and guide him through the work of bringing that to the cross.  Perhaps more importantly, they are also authentic.  They share their own "junk."  They admit to their own sinful tendencies and allow the same to be done for them.  

As a part of this process, Beau was encouraged to go through Cross-Current.  I'd been interested in the process since I first heard of it, but wanted to do it with Beau and wasn't sure how he felt about it.  I definitely did not want to do drag him along with me, and now here he was suggesting we do it together.  "Praise God," I thought!  My second thought was something like... "Oooh, I hope I don't feel really uncomfortable since my problems are so mundane!"  Hah!

Cross-Current was wonderful.  I can't say enough good things about it.  I dealt with some very deeply rooted issues in my life, as I know many do, but in all honesty, that's not the biggest dividend that I received.  The biggest dividend that I received was an eye-opening window into true community.  From what I'd heard, I knew that this was a valuable experience, and I was determined to experience it fully, so I went in determined to be genuine, but I thought it would be really hard.  Instead, on the very first day, so many of the women in my group were so very candid that I immediately felt safe.  When I heard that we would spend 90 minutes in prayer each week, I was sure it would be awkward, but instead we were politely jockeying for space to lay down our burdens and be healed.  

As you may have guessed from my earlier guffaw, I found that my issues were far from mundane.  I discovered assumptions that had been underlying my struggles for years, and am now able to identify them when they begin to creep into my life.  I have claimed freedom from attitudes and beliefs that have been coloring my perceptions for far too long, and even considering all of that, I still find the lesson in community to be the most valuable.  

I grew up in a decent church.  They believed and taught the Bible, and there were good friends and real love.  There was a place, though, called Peniel, that held a deeper place in my life. It was a camp, one my family was very involved in, and I heard real teaching there, richer than at my home church.  More than that, there was something so attractive there, a feeling of safety and love that I always thought was just a special element of blessing on that place.  I still believe there is something special there, but now I think I understand that element.  I was watching real community played out.  I was seeing a community of people who loved each other for their real authentic selves.  People came with their baggage and were enfolded into a community that was not afraid of it.  As a child and young person, I didn't have that many walls up yet, and so I didn't recognize what I was being attracted to in it's fullest sense.  I simply sensed the realness in the people around me and the fact that it was missing in other environments.  

I remember my sister becoming involved in the Mennonite church during her studies.  We kind of snickered at her because it sounded so dowdy.  I knew very little about the denomination and frankly I have never cared much FOR denomination so it didn't matter to us much except that it conjured up images of her in long black dresses with aprons.  In reality, she belongs to the "New Order" of the Mennonite church, who look just like you and I, but it gave us some good fodder to tease.  I bring this up because one of the things she started talking about when she joined this group of believers was community.  Mentally, I always agreed with her appreciation of it.  It's lovely to trust each other, it's Biblically based, it's an all around good thing.  What I think I'm beginning to understand is that she made this transition as a part of her own revelation.  I think she has had for longer than I, an understanding of this living, breathing phenomenon of community.  

That's really what it is, I think.  It's not a dart board target you aim for, it's more like a big sphere that you jump into.  I don't think we ever achieve it, truly, but the journey, the process of becoming a community... IS community.  It's why my friends always loved my family, only it turns out you don't need blood relation for it.  It's approaching people with your skin peeled back and trusting them and more importantly - GOD - to keep your guts from falling on the floor and getting trampled beyond repair.  It's being willing to take the chance that people will let you down, and understanding that it's a REALLY REAL chance (even in real community), and STILL walking into the fray.

The amazing thing is that the more vulnerable I am, the less people do let me down.  It happens, please don't think I'm suggesting it's safe... it's not.  But vulnerability attracts itself.  True repentance is irresistible.  True honestly is beautiful.  The movies that are the most poignant are the ones that SHOW the flaws and foibles.  They let us inside someone's head to show us their thoughts and motivations and they invite us to connect because they know we can.  The creators of these movies know that we will identify with the themes because we are all broken.  

When people "let it all hang out" we see ourselves in them.  We see our desperate attemps to connect and our own failures and we mourn them in ourselves while we mourn them in others.  This is the image of God in us.  I'm not suggesting that God is broken, but that he connects with our pain.  It seems to me that he is strong in our weakness because it is Truth.  Our "strength" is a farce.  It's weakness masked, and God does not deal in deception.

I've longed for this, unaware, for a very long time.  I mentioned Peniel.  I used to spend the school year wishing I were there, and the summers wishing it would never end.  There was a connection that I couldn't reproduce elsewhere.  In my longing to achieve this, I made some incorrect assumptions.  It led me to put up a picture of the me that I thought would be in this place.  Instead of bringing me to a place of authenticity, it led me to put a picture of an authentic me out there.  It had real elements.  The things I talked about sounded deep and real, but they were the smokescreen.  I found safe ways to say things so that even true confessions held caveats and were placed in frames that made them no longer dangerous.  I was making little stabs at community while keeping myself safely locked away in case it didn't work.  

Unfortunately that is the death of community.  Holding ourselves back, even in little ways, is the work of the Devil to counteract this desire we have to connect.  It's chocolate flavoring instead of chocolate.  It's enough to fool us into satisfaction when the real thing is so much sweeter, so much richer, so much purer.  Suddenly, for me, it's not enough!

Praise God for courageous people, and for people who have been so broken down that they were willing to try anything.  Praise God for a church that is stepping into this wild, uncontrolled, unpredictable sphere of community and inviting others to join them.  I can't wait to see what happens next.