In our next season of life, after we had our first child, we had friends, who were a married couple, move close to us. The wife worked with my husband and we started to get to know them when they started living 6 minutes away. They hadn’t had any kids yet, so they soon became our, “hey can you watch our kid,” couple. We loved living life with these friends.
When I first had a newborn, I watched the Food Network to try to stay awake during around the clock feedings. It became a regular thing to watch, and I think it also perpetuated my love of food and cooking. When I enjoy the food that I’ve ordered at a restaurant, I think, “hmmm, could I do this?” And if I saw something fancy being created on a show, I’d immediately think about how I would do it my way without the fanciness.
Often in this season, I would send a message to my husband saying, “Cooking, ask S if they want to come over.” Often the response would be, “They said yes, what should they bring?” And I would respond with, “Bubble tea.” Other times the exchange would start with, “Not cooking, ask S if they want to go out to eat.” I think we probably consumed hundreds of bubble teas together. Since then, 4 more children were added to our 2 families and when I see them I think of how our table for 5 would now be a table for 9.
Now we live in a different home and we also have a different experience of “living life together”. I’m incredibly blessed to have a large group of friends at the school my kids attend. I can send, or receive texts regarding pick up and drop off help on a whim. The sense of, “someone’s got my back”, for me, is greater than I’ve ever experienced and I can’t explain how grateful I am to raise my kids, living this way.
But it’s very possible to have all these ingredients to community and never really experience it. I know that if I entered this community with all my orphan baggage, I could easily get lost. My strong orphan independence makes asking for help already an alien concept, and it is routine for any orphan heart to have an unawareness for unspoken expectations in relationships. This state of unawareness can remain, even after cyclical disappointment occurs. And this type of disappointment is a diving board into a pool of self-preservation.
Self-preservation whispers, “You are not loved”, but living engaged in community requires a level of understanding of self worth. Asking for help is a strange idea for the heart that doesn’t believe that anyone would ever want to help.
Fear of rejection cannot dominate if the intention is to live in community because that fear can convince the heart to close up, self-protect, and stop inviting. I’ve battled “you are not loved” to experience living in community to a deeper level.
It is another battle worth fighting for.