A big part about doing the World Race is living in community, and if you’ve followed me for a while or follow other World Race blogs, you know what that means and how it shapes our days and the impact a great community vs. a not so great community has.
Long example short, living in community on the Race means sharing everything. From food, clothes, toiletries, beds, thoughts, and even colds. Literally everything.
For extroverts they may think: “Oh yeeeaahhhh this is my happy place.”
And for introverts we see an opposite expression: “Dear Lord Jesus save me.”
We’ve experienced some intense community living so close together and seeing each other all the time. We go to ministry together and come home and do our own things together. Sometimes if you’re lucky you may find a secret hiding place if needed, but those aren’t always guaranteed to be free. Sometimes we don’t go a whole day without seeing each other. There’s one girl on my team who I have been with since month 1 and I think the first full day apart from her was our travel days from Asia to South America. (They split us up by names for flights this time.)
And so living with this type of community we don’t really get much alone time and sometimes not even personal space. Especially this month, we live with 12-15 other people in YWAM at any given time. We eat all our meals together, our ministry is surrounded with more people and a bunch of kids. But don’t get me wrong, the more I’m here and getting to know these people, the more I love them. The only time we’re away from our partners is when we go to our own rooms. And we share 3-4 girls in one. For the last 2 months I shared a bed with a teammate and even this month I have my “own” twin bed on the floor, it’s just literally right next to my teammate’s. Us 7 girls also share a tiny bathroom, but it’s fine, it’s fine, I’m fine…
Until every little thing started to tick me off. I became so irritable at some of the dumbest things. Which didn’t make sense because nothing is crazy different from the past 7 months. I love my team, we’re all comfortable with each other. I love where I’m at, and I feel fine physically. I was just blaming my attitude on the jet lag because I couldn’t see where the problem was coming from. I hated feeling like this, somewhat miserable and misunderstood. I felt like I couldn’t explain my thoughts or feelings, I couldn’t put them into words to have someone understand. Everyone else on my team seemed fine, so I felt so alone surrounded by my community.
But they extended amazing amounts of grace even if they didn’t know it. They let me feel the feels, work through the thoughts in my head. They let me talk without trying to fix the problem, they let me keep silent when I needed to, and I eventually found the reason for my irritation.
I’m never alone. There is always someone near me.
And I think I just finally realized that it was something that I really wanted and needed. I like to say I’m the quiet extrovert, where I like to keep to myself at times, and I’m more cautious, but I love being around people and being included. I just kept pushing myself to be around people and I needed to be by myself.
When people ask me what I miss about home I usually say, “my car, my room, and my independence.” Everything I can use to go out and be myself, by myself. My favorite months (Bulgaria and Vietnam) make so much sense because they allowed time for me to be by myself and also be independent. I also had so much time to connect to God and really grew during that. The best way for me to connect to God is if I’m alone with Him. And so yeah, I was also letting that fall off my daily schedule, and hence also why I was irritated.
Jesus keeps me calm.
Getting back to praying and meditating with God and spending time in His word, and actually make an effort to find my alone time when I need it has made a world of difference in my days. I can have more joy in my day and grace towards others when my Father fills me up.
I knew all of this deep down, but I didn’t realize how important it was to me. I thought it was something I could push aside and not deal with. It’s okay to be quiet, it’s okay to need to be alone sometimes. I didn’t think community living would be hard, but it is.
And that’s the beauty of it, when we still choose it anyway.
