I have a tendency to romanticize what is “out there”—the kids going back to school, the summer, the weekend, the next pound lost or promotion gained. The future rings with possibility, and the hope of what’s to come is often a force that propels me forward.
But here I find another truth:
With eyes glued to the horizon, we often miss the ground at our feet.
The same can be true of relationships. It’s easy for me to think that belonging is waiting up ahead, some ideal community for which I have wanted and not yet found. A place where I will walk through the door totally at ease and confident and cool.
But I’m coming to the realization that maybe I will always enter the room a little awkward and out of place. Maybe we all do. Maybe expecting anything other than fits and starts, pregnant pauses, saying something wrong only to have to apologize later is keeping us from experiencing the fullness of where we are now, with the people who are already here.
In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:
“He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”
The idealist in me kind of hates this quote for all the ways it seems to diminish the dream of human connection here on earth. Who wants to remain in the middle of the mess? Who wants to show up to yet another week of small group or book club, when the last seven have required significant self-coaching just to get yourself through the door? We all want to get to a place where belonging is as easy as putting on that favorite sweatshirt from college.
Yet, when romantic ideals replace what is real, contentment remains just out of reach.
Wanting a fuller, deeper expression of our communion with God and each other (one that isn’t so darn hard) is a good thing, but comparing our current community to some unrealized vision can turn us from compassion to criticism, from reaching out to pulling back.
There are times for legitimate assessment, for determining how much you want to share or whether you are safe. There are even times to walk away.
But no matter where we are, unless we are willing to till the dirt beneath our toes, I have found that the horizon offers no more hope than where we are now. Because even if we are lonely or awkward or friendships take so much longer than we would like, we will never be settled if our eyes are always searching for what is next.
I don’t know what your relational landscape looks like these days with God or others or yourself. But if you’re eyeballing the horizon with a desire for more, you are welcome to borrow a prayer that’s been growing in me, in a season where I am not quite content but compelled to stay:
“God, help me to love the ground at my feet. Grow my compassion not for some ideal community, but for the flesh and breath but a few feet away.”
grace + peace,
Sarah
Good Things to Pick Up
a short list for narrowing the space between us
A Recipe
Here in the Midwest, we’ve been having some long, gray days over the last month, but I’ve found some comfort in a new-to-me recipe for French Bread. It’s easy to make, stays soft and buttery for days, and is the perfect pair with soups.
An Article
Last week,
shared an essay on loneliness, and I appreciated her thoughts on how the answer to our loneliness is not necessarily more people. She writes:“The crisis of loneliness is a real thing and we must pay attention to it, but I’m not convinced the cure is more togetherness or more friendships. I don’t know that our reaction to the crisis of loneliness should be to create more opportunities for connection. I wonder if the cure for loneliness is a greater awareness of the presence of Jesus?”
I hope you give it a read and feel free to let me know your thoughts, if you do.
An Opportunity to Gather (Online)
On January 27 at noon ET, I’m hosting a Zoom conversation for paid members of Human Together to explore how a “creator mindset” affects how we interact with one another as well as the way we belong in the world. (Several of us are reading Makoto Fujimura’s Art + Faith in preparation, but it’s not essential.) These types of live gatherings are going to be a monthly part of what we do here, and I’d love for you to join.
Sarah, I feel this so deeply, both the longing and the sense of calling to “stay”--in so many arenas. Thanks for putting words to these things--and for the caveat that sometimes there is a need to walk away.
Rachael and I were once counseled to consider what we would take with us if we left a community and entered a new one—how much of what we were struggling with was internal, needing personal kindness and counseling?
In other spaces, we realized how long we’d been pretending and working working working to make a bare minimum something work...and it took the counseling (for the above) to make us see clearly how we needed to leave in this separate situation.
I thinks it’s appropriate to grieve and hope in both situations.
“...a consumer mentality and our first reaction is to leave/run/hightail it out of there rather than to think, "What can I cultivate here, alongside others?””
Yessssss