His Church. art. people.
Behind the story I tell is the one I don’t…behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear. – Dorothy Allison
We’re all hiding something…holding something back for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s simply filtering. Other times, though, we hold back out of fear or insecurity. Remember that about every person you come into contact with and dare to take the risk of digging deeper.
Why do you hold back?
When I left my church, I didn’t know for sure where I was going to end up. Or at the very least was too afraid to admit that I did know but Nashville just seemed like too crazy of an option. But, deep down I did know. I knew Nashville was right because one of the things I felt God challenging me with was truly living in community and it seemed
Now I know I talk a lot about relationships. I write about them. I tweet about them. Etc. But, if I’m honest, relationships don’t always come naturally to me because I have an ongoing fight with trust. And community requires trust. If left to my own devices, though, I’ll often keep relationships and community surface level which doesn’t require a whole lot of trust on my part.
But, after my second visit to Nashville last April, something struck me about the community here…at least the community God surrounded me with during that visit…I couldn’t hide. It hit me as I was driving back to Wisconsin that I had told my story more times in those five days, and to strangers nonetheless, than I had in years. And I think at that moment I knew Nashville was exactly where God was going to drop me even if I was too afraid to acknowledge it. It was a place where I wouldn’t be able to hide.
The best community is honestly the people I get to do life with in Nashville. It’s as small as a few close friends and as big as the church I attend. It’s the people I serve alongside on Monday nights with People Loving Nashville and the homeless people we serve. It’s the people in my Village (a.k.a. small group). It’s Journey. And it’s my friends here who don’t fall into any of those.
They are people who I can laugh with, cry with, rest with, worship with, vent to, be silent with, dream with, pray with, work with, be challenged by, and serve with. It is a community that I believe with my whole heart is the reason God brought me to Nashville. It is a community that I get incredibly excited about when I think of how God has used them and will continue to use them for His Kingdom.
It’s people with some of the biggest, most compassionate and servant filled hearts I know. It’s people with some of the craziest God-sized dreams I know. They each have a different story, yet there are common threads that tie all of our stories together. It’s a community I don’t believe happened by chance. It’s a community…it’s people…for whom I am deeply grateful…I believe that God has written each of them into my story for a reason. And it’s the closest thing I’ve experienced to what I believe in my heart is the Church.
What’s the best community of people you know?
This is the second post in a series of twenty. For more on the background, check out this post.
May 28th. Wow. The year isn’t even half over and already it looks entirely different than I could have ever predicted.
In January I had every intention of sitting down and writing some stories for my life in 2010. And although I thought about them a lot, right now I’m glad I didn’t write them down. Because God has done a number on my heart since then and most of those stories would be obsolete and quite frankly unimportant to me, stories I wouldn’t even want to pursue. But since this year started, I feel like God has placed new stories in my heart. But this time, they aren’t mine, they are His for me. And that makes all difference.
As I write this I am still having an argument in my head as to whether or not I’m going to write stories for my life for the rest of 2010 (and beyond). Part of me just wants to get them down on paper and out of my head in order to process them. Part of me is afraid to put them down on paper because what if they don’t happen or they become obsolete. And the other, bigger, part of me is afraid to put them down because putting them down on paper means being held accountable for them, it means they’re real. And as exciting as that is it can also be completely terrifying at times. Because I know that the stories that God has placed on my heart are not going to be easy, they’re not going to be comfortable, they’re not going to be safe, and I like all of those things much more than I like risk.
But, let the risk taking begin. The stories are scheduled to post next week…even if in very rough draft form.
On a side note, “thank you” to those who have been a part of my bigger life story. I continue to be humbled and amazed at the people and relationships God has used to bless my life. Conversations I have had over the last five months have forever changed me. And I love that.
I am an idealist on a journey to love and embrace tension... towards more relationship & less religion. I help people get organized & put ideas into action. And I love creating environments for worship & dialoguing about art, faith, beauty, & the Church.
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