community.

 We were not meant to be alone.

Even for Adam, in the perfect garden that God created as a paradise for His creation, it was not good for him to be alone.  God created Eve as a companion for him.

When my sporadic bouts of independence kick in, this idea of community goes out the window.  I think to myself, "I don't care if I don't see friends for a while, because, frankly, I can do this all on my own.  Me and God?  That's all I really need, and that's all I really want."

This time, it meant deciding to move several states away from everything I know.  While I know that this decision is not a poor one, as the experience will be challenging but worthwhile, it was heavily influenced by my desire to get away - to be independent.

As I find myself back in Green Bay for a few weeks, I constantly think about the friends and family I have here; I think about the ties I have to family friends, to churches, to organizations, to non-profits, to so many things.  As a result, this past week has been a cornucopia of memories made, conversations had, and love shared between old and new friends alike.  I haven't had this kind of community in quite some time, and I've so missed being with people in this way.  For better or for worse, by the time I moved out of my Chicago apartment, it seemed as if my relationships with my roommates weren't really friendships anymore, but just... well, we were just roommates.

Sad as it was, it made leaving Chicago much easier.  And it left me longing for consistent fellowship.  Being in this discipleship program will mean close quarters, intentional community, and conflict resolution, resulting in deeper relationships and deeper faith.  Is that not what community was created for?  To help us turn our faces back to Christ, to bring us into this holy community of believers, to encourage one another, to worship together in heart, mind, strength, and spirit.

I pray to have consistent fellowship someday - living life together, instead of living a year together, knowing that we will go our separate ways at the end of it.  I'm tired of living as a transient.  Something permanent would hold me down, force me to rely on other people, tame those bouts of independence, and, my goodness, would just give me some of that long-desired stability.

But now is not that time.  Come December or maybe the following June, perhaps it will come.  Sigh.  Isn't it sad that we always want what we don't have?