Community

I grew up in a very small town.  I lived on a cul-de-sac with about 10 other homes.  I knew everyone in our neighborhood.  I went to school with the same people from K5-12th grade.  There are ups and downs to knowing everybody like that, but I loved it.  

When I moved away to college I found my "community" in band and church.  I loved running into people I knew in the grocery store.  It made the "big" city of Auburn feel a little smaller for me.  Now that I'm in the even bigger city of Montgomery I find that I hardly ever see someone I know out and about.  I sometimes like that anonymity, but you can easily drift away from people if you never see them.

This is why I am loving that we live outside the city in a "smaller" area.  I say smaller because it's not the big city, but our neighborhood has about as many residents as my small hometown.  (604 households and growing)  I have gotten really excited about community lately.  I got involved in our neighborhood HOA last year and while that is sometimes frustrating it's been a great way to meet new people and know the people who live just around the corner.  

Today I went to a meeting for the new elementary school that is opening up  here.  This is one of the reasons we moved out of the city.  We wanted our kids in public school, but didn't feel the ones in the city were very safe or getting the kind of attention they need for better academics.  The new school opens one year before Taylor starts Kindergarten so we are very excited to be part of it from the beginning.  I loved how everyone at the meeting today felt like this was their community school and really want to see the kids do well there.

I am also excited about our new Community groups from church.  I love the idea of worshipping with our friends and neighbors right here close to home.  Besides there being less driving involved it helps bring me closer to my neighbors who go to church with me to.  We'll have close to 100 at our Community group tomorrow night which is more than I had in my whole church growing up.  

Now that I'm home more often than not I realize that I don't know much about my neighbors.  In a weird way my neighbors are now my "co-workers".  These are people I see more often now than I do some family members.  However I don't get out of the house much to interact with them.  I hope to be better at that this year and really get to know them.  There is no telling how we can help minister to each other.  We already know of a family just 3 houses down from us who lost their baby last year to a heart problem.  Having gone through Lilly's heart condition I have some idea of how they feel.  Thankfully I still have Lilly, but I pray there is some way I can minister to them as well as them minister to us.  What are neighbors for right? ;)

I think that it's nice to have a cyberspace "blog" community out there, but please let's reach out and really connect with the people around us in person as much as possible.