ighborhood and was advertised as an intentional, Christian community ,off-campus, living experience. In this house of 8 other students and a mentoring couple, each student with their various majors, minors and extracurricular involvements, we strived to grow in our understanding and experience of God’s love for us, each other and also reach out to our neighbors. There were definitely some growing pains that we all had to go through…making house decisions in unity, when everyone had their own, individual opinions…sharing food money and chores around the house (“Whose going to shovel the snow?”)…communicating expectations of cleanliness and organization of the common living areas (“toilet paper roll going over or under?”)…and finding ministries/services in our neighborhood that would demonstrate our love.Take the topic of “What’s considered “clean” in the guys bathroom, for example. I like things to be clean and can be quite detail orientated. My guy roommates were clean, but maybe not so detail orientated. Do I just clean our bathroom to my standard every week or do they clean how they would, and I just find another bathroom? It seems small, but there could have been all kinds of hurt feelings, miscommunication and less chances for community if we followed those options. Instead, I had to choose the more effortful way of communicating my preferences, hearing their feedback and finding an agreeable solution…together.
Wow…did we have a lot of different backgrounds, personalities and individual opinions to work with…but boy, when we were working together on a common purpose: to paint the mural in the basement, have the neighbors over for a barbeque or catch the bat in the attic…what a fun and beautiful team it was to be a part of.
