Community

What is a community? Here’s how Webster’s defines that word:

1. a unified body of individuals: as
   • a. state, commonwealth
   • b. the people with common interests living in a particular area; broadly: the area itself
   • c. an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location
   • d. a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society a community of retired persons
   • e. a group linked by a common policy
   • f. a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests the international community
   • g. a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society the academic community
2. society at large
3. • a. joint ownership or participation community of goods
   • b. common character : likeness community of interests
   • c. social activity : fellowship
   • d. a social state or condition

We all have multiple communities

Most of us have a neighborhood community where we interact with our neighbors and their family whether that’s an apartment complex or an acre between with house at these larger distances; it is the community in which we live and what we make of it.

Many of us have the community of our churches where we support and encourage and pray for one another; a family among believers, the families we worship with weekly and the family of saints so large we will never meet them all until we commune in heaven for all eternity.

Students have a community among their schoolmates or our homeschooled children among their other homeschooled peers and co-op classmates.

Those in the workforce have a community on which they build their professional relationships, even if those never really cross paths with the everyday normal aspects of family/living communities.

You get the point, right? Enter the Interwebs and a whole other, new, genre appears for more community. This community makes the world feel so much smaller, don’t you agree? It has opened up the world to so many of us on a new level. A community of moms with similar issues, moms who use cloth diapers, moms who work, designers sharing ideas, homeschoolers sharing ideas and information, et cetera.

Who we are

Sometimes those communities are lived like different hats or faces we wear. Like our roles in humanity, we have a place in these communities. We are defined by our roles or how we participate in those communities.

In my family community I am a wife, a mom, a daughter-in-law, an aunt, sister-in-law. Even though I no longer get to enjoy the benefits of my biological family anymore for all it’s sadness and dysfunction I am still a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a niece, and a cousin. (Did I leave anything out?)

Within my immediate family my role as mother is defined by many things: doctor, nurse, kisser-of-bobos, chef, sometimes short-order cook, maid, laundry czar, taxi driver, grocery shopper, secretary, gardener, button sewer, seam repairer, dust destroyer, etc. I’ll tell you a secret though: I am not the bug killer/squash-er/remover extraordinaire. That would be SmockDaddy or CowBoy.

Within my church I am a member and the pastor’s wife, the woman who sits on the back pew by herself with her six children and who sometimes leaves early with three when keeping them attentive and behaved and QUIET! is more than impossible for me alone and they are disturbing the others and I can’t take the looks anymore and the stress makes it so hard for me to breathe and sending them to the nursery is not an option because it is seen as a reward. (No, William Faulkner is not an ancestor in my bloodline.)

Crossing over

Wearing these various and different hats/faces/lives/communities should not be something that limits us so greatly. We should always strive to be more and do more among our communities as our gifts and limits allow. We should strive to allow these communities to crossover into each other sharing ourselves with our communities as we see fit.

As a Christian I should strive to show Christlike behavior in all that I do, not just at church. As a mother I should strive to be the best mother I can be no matter where we are and what is going on. What we do in one community defines what others think about us in our other communities, good or bad. Impressions do matter and do effect us whether we realize it or not. As a human with flaws I fail often, daily.

Transparency

Sometimes, most times, in this Interwebby community, readers only get a small taste of us and our day and our life. When I post a cute picture of one of my children you don’t get a glimpse of the hour before when I may have cried my heart out to God over issues with Princerella, or the snappy comment I made to that driver who cut me off, or the hour I spent with water hose in hand daring my children to try to get near me/touch me. (By the way, in case you were wondering, I won.) It’s like this for all blogs; readers are limited by what we are allowed “to see” in what we read. I hope it is not as bad as reality TV shows, editing so drastically that what/who we see is no where near what/who is in reality.

Missing

Life as a pastor’s wife is a lonely one. I have mentioned this before. I recently wrote a post explaining that I wanted some transparency in my life regarding this issue. I was not allowed to be a part of the community of pastors’ wives during our years in Hattiesburg. I was looked down upon, shunned, and pushed away. I was excluded. I desperately wanted to get to know the other women there who were in the same position as I, a church member yet not a member. We face things and have to deal with things differently that most church members. To be in a place where I could learn from and have support from some of those who have gone before, from those who have walked through that fire, been left with scars, and grown on to continue and support those of us who follow would have been a grand thing. It would have been nice to discuss not who or where or when or what, but to pray with and for each other about how to stand strong and how to go on and how to walk away or pray to wash away pain and the loneliness.

This is missing from my life. I am now grateful that God kept me from that at that time because of what I know now, how much more hurt and pain I would have felt and would feel in my life had I been a part of that then. It made me stronger for today and the loneliness now in a small church in a small town. I still long for fellowship among the kindred spirit of wives of pastors for sharing. I have looked forward to our General Assembly over the years as this has allowed me that opportunity, but we could not go this year.

When worlds collide

It is an awing feeling when our worlds (communities) collide and merge and intermingle. How fun it is to meet a long time Internet blogging friend in real life. Or when a neighbor, coworker, colleague decides to come to your church because of conversations you have at home. Unless a pastor and his family are attending a large church with a staff greater than the pastor and a secretary it is very hard for the pastor and family to fit in. I want to reach out to other pastors wives and families for community and understanding. I want them to reach back to me and us all to others.

I will be writing about it. I will be writing my views and perspectives about what I believe and why. I want to make this a transparent addition so that walls can come down and understandings can be shared. I would prefer a public format for open, kind, thought out discussion or debate about various aspects of this life and views. I don’t think hiding behind passwords is the best answer to this, but until I have another solution this is the way it must be for now.

Some posts from here on out will only be able to be read or commented on by membership on my blog. This will also change how me feed is delivered. The feed readers will just simply have a link pointing my reader to come directly to my blog and login. I will be discontinuing the email delivery feed of my blog, I do not the time right now to work through the extra code for that. There will be some rules set forth before readership is granted.

• As a reader, I need to know who you are. I do not need to have met you in person.
• If you are a lurker, please tell me who you are and how you found me/my blog.
• If I do not know you it would help if you had some way for me to “get to know you” (blog, twitter, facebook, etc) so I feel comfortable allowing you into these conversations.
• You must have/provide a valid and active email account to register.

Thus begins a new era of community on this blog. I hope you will enjoy it. I pray we all do.