The Cost of Community
This June will mark four years of living in Arizona.
Four long years.
We made a move across the country from North Carolina in 2006 due to my wife’s employer relocating her. Both of us were born and raised in North Carolina, where the unspoken rule is that you live and die there, living no further than 14 minutes from your parents in the meantime. Needless to say, our move to the desert was not highly approved, especially by my family. My wife’s is much more understanding in this area. Or, perhaps they’re just less vocal than mine. But I digress.
It felt, in many ways, like starting a life from scratch. Everything changed: jobs, culture, weather, grocery stores, traffic, churches, and….
Relationships.
Most everything else has been fairly easy to adjust to. Relationships, however, are a much different story.
It seems like most people already have the maximum number of active relationships that they can handle, and simply do not have any more of themselves to give to a new relationship. Those with kids tend to typically interact with other folks who have kids, which makes sense to a certain degree. So, being new to the area and having no kids has proven to create a difficult scenario for my wife and I. Relationships that we maintain from North Carolina have expectedly become more difficult, as we either communicate via voicemail, text message or social media. These methods of communication are all fine and well, but they do not replace real interaction with people.
And boy do we know it.
It’s easy to take on a mixture of emotions, including bitterness, loneliness, and my favorite choice: cynicism.
Community seems difficult to have and maintain.
But perhaps it seems this way because we’ve made community about what we can get and how much we have to give in order to obtain it.
It’s quite selfish, really.
There is a cost involved with community.
Time, patience, forgiveness, your own interests.
Grace.
I feel like I’ve been living this “victim” role for too long. It’s a form a pride, after all. It’s high time I start to engage with people where they’re at, not requiring us all to be the same.
People in real community should be stronger because of their differences, not weaker. As believers, we should remember that we all have one thing in common for sure: the Holy Spirit.
How about you? What do you think?
What has been your experience in community, both successful and not successful?
image: sam
Well as a single college guy, community can be pretty difficult to find sometimes. Common sense tells you to look at your school for friends, only issue is you’re in a class with 40 chicks and a couple married guys. So that doesn’t work so much. Next logical choice would be your church community, but go figure, there aren’t a whole heck of a lot of single college people in churches in my area. So you connect with married couples and young families, which is good; but its still hard. Especially when people start moving, jobs get more complicated, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely grateful for the married friends I have (aka this dude named Josh), but its still hard sometimes. I suppose if anything, these experiences act like a life lesson that show you just how important community is, and the need to hold onto it when you find it.
as i’ve walked through the most difficult season of my life, the people who “should’ve” been there for me weren’t. those i expected to be a support, walked away. or worse, added to the hurt.
but God made up for it in surprising ways. He brought some incredible people into my life who’ve been a strength to me in ways i couldn’t have imagined.
in some ways, it more than makes up for what’s missing.
in other ways, it only magnifies it.
Honored that you comment here, my hope-to-one day-call-friend. You add more to these posts in a few sentences than the posts themselves…grateful for that.