COMMUNITY

            I was reading today in a cooking magazine about a neighborhood that had Sunday dinner gatherings.  The writer used the term community building when describing their group.  This led me to think about the importance of community in my own life.  When Chris and I first moved to the area, we lived in student housing.  Chris was in grad school and I was teaching at a local private school.  Caleb was just a year old.  We lived in the older section of apartments.  The apartments were arranged in courtyards and we spent many evenings together with our neighbors, often just sharing the little and odd assortment of food we had.  I remember these times fondly because it was through this time that I realized how important it was to feel as if you belong to people, and that the people you surround yourself with understand what it is like to walk in your shoes. 

            Since this time, we have moved from student housing to a neighborhood that models itself after Mayberry, and now to the wooded retreat that we live in.  Through all of this I have found that a sense of community is crucial to my well-being.  We have the privilege to be part of a home-group that breaks bread together every week.  We don’t pretend to tackle any deep theological questions.  We don’t really even tackle the shallow ones.  We simply eat together and pray together as best we can with all the children running around.  Our church had a meeting one evening for each group to discuss how we felt our individual groups were doing and what we could do better.  We listened to other groups discuss what they were studying and how they felt that things were going and we decided as a group that we were just awesome!  You may laugh at this, but I found it refreshing.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am not knocking the other groups.  They are at different points in their lives.  It just was nice to know that we as a group understood the importance of community, relying on each other.  This group of people is often my lifeline.  I can share what my weekly struggle is and know that I am going to enjoy the fellowship of their laughter, food, and wine every Thursday night and have a night off from cooking two to three times a month.  This is where true friendship is birthed, in the everyday.  It is in the stress of life, the poopy diapers, the vomit, the crazy coworkers, that we find connections with each other and can offer each other a way outside of all of that.  I am extremely thankful for the love and honesty I find each week when we finally sit down together and I am challenged to be more honest with myself and with my friends each week.  That is what community is.

My Place

            There are many places that represent peace to people in the world.  This summer I got to spend some time at my place of peace, the beach.  I enjoy watching the water.  It is a place where I feel I can just sit and be.  I enjoy watching my children play.  The boys ride wave after wave and every so often bite it.  I got to sit back and watch them get up and “shake it off” and return to the very waves that just sent them sprawling.  It occurred to me that we have to do that in life.  Events occur that send us sprawling face down and eventually we have to climb up and get back to life.  The question is do we do it with fear and trembling or with a sense of adventure and positive expectation?  I, I must admit, usually return with great fear.  I’ve have come to believe in my inner-most being that the proverbial floor is always about to drop out from underneath me.  This is no way to live.  It is draining and frankly no fun.  I want to have the joy that my younger son possesses.  He is a child of great passion.  Joy and furry course through him and boy does he know how to have fun!  He wants to be able to fly, never mind the impossibility of this.  It looks adventurous, so he wants to do it.  This is a gift.  We all need to possess this care-freeness that comes so easily to him.  I have spent many hours at the beach throughout my life.  This year however, I came away with something more than just nice pictures.  As this school year unfolds, I am resolving to meet each wipeout, not with fear, but with expectation of the adventure that is to come.

Serenity Now!

            This is my first attempt at blogging.  I do not consider myself a good writer, but I have learned the therapeutic value of writing at times.  I chose serenity now as my blog title for a couple of reasons.  First, I believe we all desire peace in our lives, but for many reasons peace seems to elude most of us.  Secondly, I have found in my life that peace is not always an absence of chaos, but a condition of the mind.  There is a Seinfeld episode in which George’s dad shouts out “Serenity now!”, whenever he feels stressed.  I have done that myself half-jokingly, but I do believe there is some truth in it.  Ultimately, I believe that true peace comes from recognizing who I am in relation to my Creator, but practically speaking, that doesn’t always work when there are four small children screaming at you.

            I don’t know that I have any grand aspirations with this new project other than to share some of my thoughts/struggles with marriage and motherhood and how that is blended with working outside of the home.  Each day is a new day with no mistakes in it as Anne Shirley would say, and I try to remind myself of that as I get up.