I have always loved the idea of community. I have always thought it would be so rewarding to live with a body of believers and have them uplift and encourage you when needed. But I never realized that community is so much different when you don’t have your own space and your out of your comfort zone. Community is also so much different when you start to think of all the things your community will straight up annoy you with when you’re surrounded by them 24 hours a day.
At training camp, person after person got up and shared how community will shape you on the Race. It’ll be some of the worst things about your race and some of the best things about your race. But you must invest.
I’m here to agree to that. So far I have had a month with 11 other people, a month with 40 other people and now this month with 4 other people. Each months have brought their similar yet different struggles.
I think the hardest part about this community that we are in is that we are all works in progress. Of course, even at home, we are all works in progress. But the world race atmosphere gives you a place to dive into the things you need to work through, which makes your community that much more vulnerable. And to top it off you’re surrounded by each other 24 hours a day. At home you can leave your friends after that coffee date and reflect on the things they said. Or you can leave the people that are annoying you by going to your own room. In this community, you have to work through it head on. In this community, you’re constantly witnessing the things your fellow squad mates are going through, yet you, yourself, are going through various things. You don’t want to take things too personal because you know that we are all going through something, but you also want to be honest with your feelings.
Colossians 3:12-14 “Put on then, as Gods chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as The Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” This verse is what we strive to have our community look like but if I am being honest… it hasn’t looked like this. Although we are learning, we snap at each other quite often or we say things we don’t mean. We bicker. We laugh at each other. We hurt each other. We overreact or under-react to the way someone is feeling. We don’t take each other seriously. We take each other too seriously. But at the end of the day we do put on love. We choose each other like a family because we want to make this work. There are things we are still learning about each other that these few months have yet to expose. But we are learning & we will continue to learn. We won’t be perfect, but we will strive to do this well.
In the end it comes down to giving up control of this community to the Father and forgiveness. Giving up control to the One who brought us here. And forgiving each other for the ways we misunderstand each other or the things we just don’t like about each other. Because honestly as a team full of humans we will fail. We will hurt each other. We will feel misunderstood. We will have a great break though as a team and then a couple days later it seems that everything that was said went out the window and that we are back to square one. Some will shut down. We will be frustrated and sometimes overwhelmed. But in the end we have to choose this team. The only thing that helps is that we choose each other. We choose each other like The Lord chooses us. He chooses us in our mess and our brokenness. He chooses us in our attitudes and our frustrations. He chooses us even when we didn’t choose him the day before. He chooses us daily. It’s just our choice to let him work.
You see even when it’s not easy this community will make us stronger. It’ll dig out those ugly parts, expose them and slowly carve them out of our very being. We will be different at the end of this. We will be better. And The Lord will be glorified for that.
This has been my closest community for the last three months. They have seen me annoyed, happy, sad, upset, excited and disappointed. They have seen me broken, hurt, and frustrated with myself and them. We will continually have to ask for forgiveness when we hurt each other. We will have to give each other space. But we will love each other well. And as long as our team lasts we will uplift and help each other change into the people we want to be. We won’t settle for less than that. I love my team.
