If you’ve ever lived in community then you can probably relate to a lot of this, if you haven’t, then brace yourself because this is reality.
Over the last two and a half years after YWAM, I craved community. I craved people to laugh with when things were hard or when things were just plain ridiculous. I desired having people that would point me towards the Lord when I wanted to look in every other way. I think the biggest thing I desired was to grow alongside people, to learn together, to fight for each other and to be real together.
Now, I’m here. I’m living in Novi Sad, Serbia with 5 other women in the top floor of a church and I would kill for just an hour to be absolutely alone. Today we were trying to answer the question, “How are you dealing with living in community?” The only answer I could come up with was “eh it’s not terrible.” HA.
How could I have craved this and then struggled as soon as it became a reality?
Well, that’s life. But even more than that, living in community is hard. It’s so hard to share literally everything when you’ve been so used to being on your own for so long. But I think the most important thing about living in community is that it’s okay to be by yourself. It’s okay to step away and have your own thoughts. Sometimes you just need to create that space, stick your headphones in, get up for an hour in the middle of the night to hang out with Jesus, sit in the bathroom for awhile, take a shower. Be creative. It’s possible and it’s a blessing.
I then got to the next question, “What have been your favorite memories since you’ve been here?” Well that got me thinking too, I have had many. And many of them are the moments when my team and I can’t help but laugh so hard that we’re nearly ready to pee our pants or the times when we realize we are actually peeling a hot dog from its shell to eat it or when we go to Zumba with some young girls and laugh because we are terrible dancers and they are all showing us up. The moments when we realize we don’t even know what’s coming out of our mouths anymore. It’s the long walks home where we get to have heart-to-heart conversations and take our minds off of the fact that our feet hurt so bad after walking 8 miles around the city or it’s the feeling of having someone to turn to when you don’t even know how to feel about something or when you want to grow and there’s someone right beside you pushing you to step out of your comfort zone and step into a new place.
Community living is oh so hard, oh my word. Sometimes I could cry because I just want to be alone, but being able to wake up laughing because somebody is farting in their sleep is what it’s really about. It’s about those moments that you just need to hang on to because laughter is so much better together than it is alone.
