free to be

And then the day came,
when the risk to remain
tight in a bud
was more painful
than the risk it took
to blossom.
--Anais Nin

Community. Real, authentic, accept you 'just as you are' community. Does it really exist? It sounds good in theory but how many people truly live in that place? More specifically, does such community exist within the church? Sure, the church may be crawling with small groups but what really happens as we gather together each week? How are we loving each other? How are we loving those outside the group--especially those who are different from us?

Last year I read "Blue Like Jazz" and for the first time in my life I felt like I was reading a book that completely reflected my heart in terms of my faith and community within the church. I've been told this is a controversial book to some. For me, it was honest. A breath of fresh air. I may not agree with all of the author's thoughts and perceptions but the heart and soul of the book really spoke to me. It served as a tool that encouraged personal introspection and facilitated discussions about topics that actually meant something to me.

A little over a year ago, I was a huge skeptic when it came to community-specifically within the church. I was not at all interested in being a part of another small group where talk is superficially deep and where it's an unspoken prerequisite to be a clone in order to be accepted. However, Kyle and I were also at a place in life where isolating ourselves wasn't working for us either. It was painful. We craved authentic relationship, and we dabbled in it with a select few but we still just wanted it on our terms. If I'm honest, the same could be said of my relationship with God. One day, through unrelated circumstance, the Lord blew us into the home of a couple from our church as they met with their own small group. Each person introduced themselves to us and most of them had been a part of the group for years...5 years, 6 years, 3 years, etc. Years? That got my attention. In the past, it was all I could do to hang in there for 1 year or a summer. When it was my time to introduce myself I was suddenly overcome with emotion. Emotion I didn't even know existed. I could tell I was in a room full of people who loved each other differently. It rendered me speechless and it made me cry. Not only did I desperately want that, I was created for that.

And now it's a year later. The photo above was taken when the women from my group went to a cabin in North Carolina. It was late at night, the sky was black but a handful of us ran outside to see the stars. The laughter was real. And so was the community. It really does exist--even for this skeptic.

It's scary to invest in people at the heart level. I cry a lot more these days--but I laugh more, too. And more importantly, there's life in my walk with God. I didn't even know, before I met them, how much unbelief I harbored. I didn't know that I was missing out on all the joy and beauty in loving God...and in loving people. Authenticity is still a struggle for me personally but I'm thankful that I have people in my life who constantly give me permission to let it all out-the good, the bad and the ugly. If you haven't read Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, I recommend it. And then talk about it...and don't stop. Maybe the Lord will blow you through someone else's open doors.