Community

It's been on my heart to share what I'm learning, and to be honest, perhaps this is more for my benefit in the long run... every day I see miracles happening.  My heart, my eyes, and my ears are changing so fast and I'm excited with what I'm learning!

I expect that this transition into blogging may not be graceful as I have no idea what I'm doing... but I am confident that the message will come through anyway.  My story - how I got here - will come in time, but know that I have not understood nor needed companionship, neighbors, community, friendships in over 10 years.   The concept was lost on me.

As I've been searching for understanding through a church (now my church) I felt nervous and uncomfortable with everyone being so friendly and asking "how I am".  Why did they want to know?  What would their expectations be of me?  All of my relationships (at least up to this point) have all been performance-based.  I could not wrap my head around people caring about me simply for the sake of caring.


I had been attending church for about a month and a half when I had to go out-of-town on business, making me miss our mid-week Wednesday prayer group.  I was surrounded by strangers in an environment that was everything but familiar to me and not-at-all comfortable in the traditional sense of the word.  


I used to be a flight attendant, so traveling and being in new environments was nothing new to me... but this was very different.  I felt isolated.  I started longing, but I wasn't sure for what.  It wasn't until I walked into the door of my home, hearing the music that I leave on (our local Christian radio station) I felt comforted and immediately at peace.  As I sat down to write my pastor a quick note, it came to me:

I am being shown the meaning and reason for community:) What I'm understanding is this: God can hug us, physically touch us, look us in the eye, be 'tangible' (so-to-speak) through our Christian community... and that is SO important in this 'world' where we are almost assaulted without rest by worldly (unloving) language, behavior, images, sounds/music, thoughts/opinions from others all imposed without our permission. The human-ness in me NEEDS to come back to my community - and NOW I understand what that means:) I want to be a part of creating the environment that I'm craving... and I want to SPREAD that environment... past the walls of the church:)