Friends and Community

I recently returned from Connecticut.  It was my first visit back after moving to Georgia eleven months ago.  So here are some thoughts on friends and community – and what I’m being challenged to do.
 
It was wonderful to be back – to see friends and supporters and acquaintances.  To visit familiar places.  To eat Tulmeadow ice cream for dinner (and lunch).  To worship with my church family.  To have the long conversations over breakfast and lunch that are harder to do while I’m working full time. 
 
Friends are treasured gifts.  And I have the best ones I could ever imagine.  I lived in Connecticut for 17 years and deep, deep friendships grew there.  We shared life together for a long time – part of it during a season where I needed more than my fair share of shoulders to cry on.  I have friends I can confide anything to, that know how to have fun, that laugh, that talk about things that matter.  Friends that I would trust with my life.  There are friends that grew out of our kids’ connection, or a shared ministry at church, or co-workers at school.   Some of them have driven hundreds of miles to see me since I’ve moved.  Or made curtains for my new house.  Or sent notes of encouragement at just the right time.
 
Good and deep and lasting friends are rare and I am grateful for them.
 
But I had something else in Connecticut.  I had community – and I think that’s rarer.  It’s harder to describe.  I had it in a church community that loved me and cared for me and welcomed my gifts.  Where I was able to serve and grow.  Where 35 people showed up to do over 120 combined hours of work on a Saturday when I needed help getting the house ready to go on the market in the midst of an excruciatingly painful divorce.  I had it in that same church community who held out the promise of healing.  Yes, it was individuals who did the practical steps of walking me into that healing but I knew they were part of something bigger – a community that made that possible. 
 
I had community in a small group.  All of the individuals in the group were friends in their own right.  But the small group was more than just a random collection of friends.  There was a corporate aspect to it – a commitment to speak truth to each other, to support each other, to hold each other accountable, to challenge each other to grow.  To do life together in practical ways.  To paint each other’s houses, to watch movies together, to pray for each other.  The effect was greater than the sum of its parts.  It’s a group that made an annual trip to Disney, that worked together in ministry opportunities like Day Camp or tag sales, that can get together and pick up where we left off – despite the fact that I’m now in Georgia and another couple is in Indiana. 
 
World Racers talk a lot about community when they return from the Race.  They have experienced it – and they don’t want to lose it.   I understand that. 
 
I think friendships come easier than community does.  But I no longer want to settle just for friendships.  I think we need to be part of a community that brings life to us, that calls out the best in us, that challenges us, that does life with us on a day in and day out basis.
 
So – do I regret leaving all that behind to move to Georgia?  It was the hardest part about moving but I discovered something on my trip back to Connecticut.  As wonderful as it was to be there and to reconnect with friends, there was no second guessing my decision to move.  I know I’m where I am supposed to be. 
 
I sometimes wonder whether the community I had in Connecticut was a fluke, something that I will never have again.  But I’m hopeful that as I continue to live life with friends and co-workers in Georgia, that it will happen.  It’s worth the effort it takes to find it.
 
And so I’m challenged to step up my efforts to help create it.  To overcome my shyness and my fear that people are too busy to want to spend an evening together eating dinner or playing games or taking walks.  To confront my introversion and be better about inviting people (or maybe to team up with an extrovert who can do the inviting). 
 
My insecurities cause me to want to be invited into community rather than being the initiator of it.  There’s less fear of rejection that way.  But I want to change that, to be proactive.  I want to be someone who creates community, not just friendships.