Connection is something that we all crave and it is a desire that God has placed in our hearts. The Father lives in perfect harmony and connection with the Son and the Spirit, and He desires that connection with us and for us to have connection with those around us too. We were literally made to be in community with one another, yet connection and community is something that so many people, including myself, have struggled with. Why?
Community and connection means vulnerability and it means admitting that we need other people. It means opening ourselves up to being hurt and rejected for the chance to be loved and known.
Christian community is something that I struggled with for a long time. I would say that I didn’t really have any Christian community until I was in college. (Now don’t get me wrong, you can have good meaningful community with people of all faiths, but there is always going to be something different about Christian community because Christian community should point you back to Jesus.)
During the year leading up to the race, the Lord blessed me beyond belief with some amazing Christian community. I was able to grow and love and learn and it was an amazingly fruitful time in my life and it almost made it hard for me to leave. It would have been so hard to leave, but my community were my biggest champions of encouragement and they were the ones who spurred me on to do what I knew that the Lord was calling me to do, even though it meant me leaving for 11 months. (They are the best tbh.)
On the race they call it ‘community in a microwave’. You are thrust together with a group of strangers and asked to live with them, do ministry with them, trust them, and grow with them in such a short amount of time. At first it was really hard, I won’t lie and say that it wasn’t. Being asked to trust and be vulnerable with people you don’t know isn’t exactly the most natural thing in the world.
My first two months of the race felt incredibly lonely. I was living with more people that I ever had before, yet I was struggling to feel connected to them. People were guarded and people were learning how to be open (myself included), and it made it difficult to keep intentionally pressing into vulnerability because it didn’t come naturally. In fact, during the first month my team and I probably shied away from it more than we chose it.
I looking back I know that I lived those first few months with a posture of defense. I would only show people what I thought they wanted to see, or what I though they would respond to. I practiced a lot of false vulnerability but in reality I was only showing people the things that were safe, and when I stepped out and tried to actually be open or vulnerable, it wasn’t received the way I thought it would and it was scary and I was left feeling hurt and misunderstood.
In Ukraine I remember having a conversation with one of my squad leaders and I remember saying ‘I’m trying to connect and be vulnerable but no one else is. What do I do?’
She said ‘Stay at the table.’
I was looking at my situation like I was a victim, someone who was powerless to connect with these people who didn’t understand me. I was putting all of the responsibility on the people that I viewed as not trying enough, I missed the fact that I had a choice.
If I decided to stop trusting and loving the people around me because I’d been hurt or because I felt misunderstood, then I’m was making the decision to kill any chance of connection going forward.
We all have a choice to go sit at the table. The table is connection, the way God designed it: There is room for everyone, and everyone has a choice to join. To sit down at the table means that you’re making the choice to seek connection, regardless of what other people are doing. No one can make you get up and leave the table if you don’t want to. They can choose to leave, but that doesn’t impact our decision, unless you let it.
You can’t control other people, but you can control yourself. You can sit down and stay there, no matter who gets up and leaves. You can stay, you can be open, you can extend grace, you can seek connection.
It’s hard, because sitting at the table by yourself can be lonely, but I want to be someone who decides to stay at the table. I want to be the first one to sit down and the last one to get up. I want to remember that each person who sits down or gets up is so vastly different from anyone else, that its useless to compare them. If one person hurts me I don’t want that to stop me from being able to be in loving community with someone else.
The race often talks about fighting for your team and for what you want and what God wants for you.
I had to fight for my community during the first few months of the race, and so did my team. It was hard and awkward but again and again we decided to choose each other. I had to dig my heels in, grab the edge of the table, and hold on tight to keep myself from running away. At times, everyone else seemed so far, but if we are all waiting for the other people to sit down first, we will always be standing.
Sitting down at the table together doesn’t mean that connection will come easily, it means that you’re choosing to seek connection and to seek the other person.
I can promise without a shadow of a doubt that every person you seek connection with will hurt you, because we are all humans, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we are supposed to get up and leave. Seeking connection can hurts but it can also lead to joy beyond measure.
“Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
My first team sat at the table. We might not have all started there, but we ended there. My first team was incredibly difficult for me, but out of that difficulty, we all had to choose and keep choosing each other, and out of that came depth and intimacy and community and connection, all wrapped in God’s grace and love.
By the end of our time together we were able to lay wounds, bare and bleeding, and it was received with love and trust and hands that helped wipe the blood away and invite the love and forgiveness of the Father in.
Sitting at the table got a whole lot easier the longer I stayed there.
Now I’m on a new team, with different people, and the process starts over.
When someone hurts me or says something that strikes a cord, I get to choose to love them and to continue to seek connection with them. I get to choose to see them as more than their words or actions but to see them as God sees them: someone worth choosing and connecting with (that is, unless they are Patriots fans, am I right?).
An important thing to remember is that God is also at the table with us, and He doesn’t even have to hold on or dig His heels in, He wants to be there. He is reaching across the table for our hands. He wants us to be even more connected than we ever thought we could be.
Much love,
Morgan
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