This is 'feel again' by One Republic and it makes me happy. The video is a bit meh but if you turn the song up really loud and jump about it's FUN. I will do that when I can walk and stuff.
So let the thinkings commence:
So we live in community.
If you're not a Christian or haven't read the same books as me, you might not get what that means to me or what i'm trying to tell you.
In the book called Acts, inside the bigger book called the Bible, there's a bit that talks about what Christianity looked like when it was new. And nobody wanted for anything because everyone shared everything.
Sounds simple
and as a heady newbie to the Jesus following I was passionate about this - about doing relationships intimately and well, about bringing a bit of heaven's joy to the people around us, about living together in big groups and seeing each other all the time and helping each other and learning how to love in the face of the consumerist isolation of the culture I grew up in.
Yep. I'm a big ol' hippie.
The thing is: it's not that simple.
I've experienced Christian community in a few different ways - boiler rooms, church, DTS - and find myself now looking down a road of long term commitment to a small group of people who I don't yet know that well.
If I was perfect, this would be easy.
Every slight would be ignored, all wrongs instantly forgiven and forgotten, all belongings surrendered, no offence taken, no offence meant, no offence caused.
I'd share everything, right?
Instead, this is what me living in community looks like (it's an honesty smack down, people):
I get angry when people break my glasses.
I get angry when people draw on my sofa with biro (seriously, this happened like 3 weeks ago and i'm still writing about it, there is something wrong with that).
I get angry when people wake my baby up.
I get angry when people put things in the wrong place.
I get angry a lot.
But there's more, and it's more sad than a bit of sleep deprived stroppyness. It's actually really sad, and i'm sad when I see how broken my reactions are to things. (Sad.)
It's taken 10 years of Christian community for me to own this fact: I am insecure.
I don't mean about my weight or my ability to apply makeup or any of those other token insecurities that girls apparently must have, and I don't mean about my ability to follow or lead or write or other things we might consider deep.
I mean bone deep, soul deep insecurity, graven in scrubbed through etched insecurity.
Not sure why - some hurts from life, some lies from the world, mostly just because I am a tiny human person walking small in this big scary world. And sin.
You know how I see this insecurity in me working itself out? Judging. Judging others before they can judge me. Mouthing off. Slagging off. Justifying myself. Oh, what a messed up person I am. Scared and hateful and pretending. Which makes living in community quite difficult because of all the time and energy spent on building walls, keeping my scared heart safe, being numb, raging at everything, undermining people who should inspire me, coveting stuff, defending myself when nobody's attacked me...
(You're messed up too. Everyone is. Deal with it.)
So that is what I must confess this week, to the weird world of people I don't know who read this blog and trusted friends who read this blog and people i'd probably prefer if they didn't read this blog...I am insecure.
And here's the twin conclusion:
1) This is very sad, but: I have not been left like this.
This insecurity - this sin, this falleness, this hurt, this fear, this unforgiveness - is not what was intended when God created us and we. are. not. abandoned.
I've got God, and he is healing me and urging me on and his kind, kind heart will take this muddled me and there will be a day when I will feel awesome ALL THE TIME. It's called Heaven. It's called Grace.
2) In the meantime, it's also called Grace. It looks like me realising that insecurities are smaller when you call them out of the shadows, that the fear is placed in nothing but lies, that the power of my God blasts through these stupid walls and windows and doors and this cage we accept called sin? Screw it.
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