Maintaining Community

"Community" is currently a buzzword in Christianity. We are constantly encouraged to fellowship with other believers and to build relationships and to share our struggles and to bear one another's burdens and to open our homes and to go out to eat with friends and to send cards and to make phones calls and the list goes on and on.

Just thinking about it makes me squeamish. I'm really not a people person. This quote is so me:

Source: funri.com via Melissa on Pinterest

It's not so much that I'm lazy, I just don't like others dictating my schedule. (That sounds way more selfish typed out than it did in my head.) When I was a little girl, I would beg my mom to send away the neighbors who were asking to play with me. I didn't want to have to play the way someone else wanted to play. (Again, that sounds so much more selfish typed out than in my head.)

Just yesterday I was reading an interview with Jean Craighead George, author of My Side of the Mountain, as I was preparing a lesson for my students. The interviewer of course asked George what tips she had for aspiring writers. My heart soared when I read: "You have to like to be alone. Writing can be lonely, although you do populate your head with all these characters." I want to be a writer one day. I love being alone. Maybe it's okay that I prefer being alone in my apartment than spending time with non-relatives. Maybe my hermit-like tendencies will further my writing career. Maybe I can justify not building relationships.

Right now I can count most of my authentic, living, breathing relationships (outside family) on one hand. It's not that I live in the tundra of Siberia. It's not that I get mad at people easily. It's not that I'm extremely unlikable.

I think what it boils down to is fear. I'm afraid of getting close. I'm afraid of baring my soul to another individual. I'm afraid of getting close to someone only to move far away from them. I'm afraid I will annoy any potential friends. I'm afraid my friends are ashamed of how I dress. I'm afraid others will think I'm presumptuous. I'm afraid to barge into pre-formed friendships. I'm afraid to impose. I'm afraid to say the wrong thing. I'm afraid I'll interrupt them while they're busy. I'm afraid of being rejected.

But God doesn't want me to be all alone. He calls us to build relationships with others. We are to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. There are all sorts of verses about friendship in the Bible. Jesus is the perfect example of the perfect friend.

Here's what I'm going to do about it: I'm going to call up my friends (and even family) within the next two weeks who I've been neglecting while hiding myself away. I have at least two friends that need phone calls. I have one friend who just had a baby and might need an outing with a friend. I have two grandmas who need phone calls. I have countless family members who need Thank-You cards. I have a Starbucks gift card that needs to be used. I have a niece who needs some presents. I have a future sister-in-law who barely knows me. I have a cousin who needs a card in the mail. I have siblings in college who need care packages. I have dear friends who need to eat a meal at my house because they've had me over for hundreds.

I'm going to stop padding myself with my messy house and Netflix obsession and blog reading and ungraded papers and get out there and open myself to community. It's what Jesus would do.

Photo by Jeff Johansen Photography