One thing you learn very quickly while on the race is that you are never alone. At first, I thought I would not like it. I thought I would get tired of my squadmates very quickly. I always have to find a buddy when I need to go to the grocery store or want to get some quiet time at the coffee shop down the street. I am not allowed to be out past 9pm on ministry nights or 11pm on off days. I wake up to prepare breakfast with my setup partner, go to daily devos as a whole squad at 7am, spend the entire day with my team during ministry, then have team dinner at 6pm and team time at 7pm. Once I finish with that, I go up to the roof – where there are more squadmates hanging out – to shower and then go back to my room that I share with 4 other squadmates. I think at this point we are all default extroverts. I am always with someone. I am even asked by the next stall for toilet paper a lot. Literally. NEVER ALONE.
Despite the constant community, this is the best season ever and one I will cherish forever. I love living in community with my squadmates. I love getting to catchup about each others’ days every day for the ones that have different ministries. I even love hearing how my own teammates are doing at team time every night because, even though I’m with them literally all day and share a room with two of them, every day is different for each of us. We all have different stories and perspectives for the same thing that happened. (My favorite example of this was this last Sunday when we all taught English together, but that night I got to hear about Hannah’s incident in which she got throat chopped by a kid.) I love spending every minute getting to know and be known by 40 other amazing people. We are vastly different, yet we all love and are loved by the same God.
Despite what I predicted, I really haven’t had too much difficulty finding peace and quiet. I usually have to wake up super early to get that, BUT the things the Lord speaks during the moments of silence amidst the noise is incredible. I have learned to appreciate my independence, but mostly I’m just thankful to be living with my best friends. I always have someone when I need to talk or want to cuddle or just want to hang. Hands-down best thing about community is getting to share what the Lord is speaking in my little bit of alone time with my never-ending community of people.
The hardest part of community is when conflict does arise. I don’t know if this is established across the board or not, but conflict is not fun. Honestly, it sucks. But it happens. And as a community we can choose to either address it, or continue to kick it under the rug. I am very thankful that my team time has chosen the first of these. We started the race doing feedback every night at team time and it has benefitted us so much. We are still very much still learning how to effectively communicate and reach understanding, but its really cool to see how far we have already come. I can officially say that I no longer fear feedback (*thumbs up emoji)
Community living is not always the easiest thing in the world, but it is one of the best.
P.S. As I was writing this Merrill didn’t think I was tough, and I wanted to prove her wrong, but she slapped my hand and it left a bruise and in that moment I no longer liked community living.
