If there is something that you learn quickly on this race it is how to truly live in community. In America we don’t ever have to live out real community. In fact it seems the American way to not live in real community. We work to accomplish our own goals. We live in our own place and even if you have a roommate you at least have your own room. We go to church, but we aren’t real about what is really going on in our life. When anyone asks us how we are, the response is always, “Fine.” We like doing our own thing, in our own time, by our own power. It is the American mindset that we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and do what needs done. Nobody is going to do it for you is the thought. All of that is so contrary to real community living.
I’ve been learning a lot about living out life with honesty and vulnerability with those around you. When we go to training camp and talk about community the mindset seems to be more like, “How do I live in close quarters with six other people?” This is a valid question and is something we all have to learn. I thought of it more in terms of personal space, and alone time, and who keeps their stuff picked up and who doesn’t being the issues that would come up while living in community. When you really get into this though you find out it is so much deeper. Community means really being transparent with the people around you. Letting them see your struggles and being open enough to admit when you don’t have it all together. Telling them about the crap in your life and the things you deal with and knowing they will love you anyway. This is real community.
How do you get this sort of community? Yes, being put together for 11 months straight for almost 24/7 can push you into this type of community setting, but it doesn’t mean you have to be real. I could have gone the whole year and never been truly open and honest with my team. I could have chosen to only tell them about the stuff I’ve already got figured out, not the stuff I’m struggling to work through. I could have told them only about the not so bad stuff in my life, not the really bad junk that I’m ashamed of. I could have put up a mask for 11 months and let them see only what I chose, but then I would have lost the opportunity for true community and that would have been the saddest thing ever.
True, living, and breathing community isn’t easy. It means you have to confront people when you see something in them that they need to work on. It means you have to put others before yourself all the time and it means you will fail at this and sometimes say things you wish you hadn’t because you were only thinking of yourself. It means you have to get real, pull off the mask and say here I am for real. It means you have to have grace when someone says or does something that isn’t the way you would have said or done it. It means you have to forgive when you are hurt and ask forgiveness for hurting. There is no running away in real community.
True, living, and breathing community is also fantastic. It means that you have people who will call out greatness in you. People who will point out your flaws but walk with you in prayer and daily life as you try to figure out the root cause and dig it up. It means there are people who are trying to put you before themselves because they love you that much. It means that there are people who will forgive you for being a jerk and show you grace for saying those things you wished you hadn’t. It means there are people who will love you, even when you take off the mask and show them what lies underneath. It means people who are trying their hardest to be like Jesus and even though they fail like you do, you learn and grow together and by doing so grow closer to the Lord and one another.
What I want to see most when I go home is the church learning to live in community like this. Not to put on masks of the people we think we should be, but to realize we are all messed up in one way or another and nobody has it together. I want to see people unafraid to be who they really are and call out greatness in one another. To not be afraid to live in love and be guided through prayer by the Spirit of the Lord to point out places someone needs to grow. Not to attack them, or tell them they are wrong. I want to see the church lean on God and trust him and trust that he has put us with these people for a reason and so we should learn to trust them and lean on them. We don’t have to walk through this journey alone. Yes the Lord is our first and only love, but he didn’t intend us to do this alone. He gave us each other to grow deeper in knowledge and understanding and he wants us to be real with one another.
