You thought living with your two best friends was hard. There were disputes, broken friendships and lots of laughter.
I want you to imagine living with 6 strangers, but not just living with them, doing life together. Imagine waking up beside each other because you are sharing a twin bed, going to the bathroom, when the other is brushing their teeth, eating, working and then just simply hanging out together because team time is a must even if you have been together all day long. You are literally together 24/7, this is community living at it’s finest.
Community living is not easy, it is rather hard. This type of living doesn’t even exist in a marriage, you may sleep and eat together, but most of the time you have different jobs. friends and other things going on. In a marriage you usually just start and end the day together, spending the occasional off day in each others presence. There are usually other people there to help you, when you just need a break.
In community living you don’t have this, you have to be open with the whole group or the perfectly oiled machine becomes very squeaky. You have to be open and honest with each other and truly tell people how you feel. For an introverted person like me, it has been a learning process, but I can see I have grown so much from the past month of community living.
As much as I loved living with six other girls (something I have never done before), I was super excited to find out about an all squad month. You may be thinking what does this mean? That is a great question and it means that all 8 of our teams come together to do ministry together, that means that I went from having 6 roommates to having 54 over night. Crazy, right? 54 people doing life together, it is a lot to handle at times, but I am so thankful for this month.
Here is a survival guide to all squad month.
- Pursue others
- Meet up with someone you don’t know yet and take them for coffee
- Find a corner of the house and use earphones or nothing will get done
- Wake up early if you want any alone time
- Even though there are so many people to hang out with, remember to still pursue your team
- Stay organized
- Bring Earplugs
- Wake up early if you want a shower, or be prepared to wait a long time
- Pray to be accustomed to smell
- Share your food
- Be open to sharing a bed
ENJOY IT, EMBRACE IT & HAVE FUN
