Community

“Instead of waiting for community, provide it,

and you’ll end up with it anyway.” 

–Jen Hatmaker, For The Love

If it sounds from our last (written) post that we are processing a lot…we are. This past year has not been all bad, by any stretch. There have been moments of great beauty and sincere connections.

We are all in some kind of transition most of the time, are we not? Transition did not end when our one year mark was hit. We are still transitioning, still adjusting, still finding our place. This summer, for instance, many great things happened. Yet, they all are taking a little adjusting to. Our sweet Cecily was born. Audrey’s mom and sister made the journey to be there for the birth and play a crucial role as it was all hands on deck with three spunky kids. Just as we had settled into a rhythm, they had to go home and their loss was grieved deeply. And we had to readjust. We moved into a new-to-us home, which was thankfully not far, and thankfully full of more space. And we readjusted again.

Thinking back, it was the kind act of some of the veteran families inviting us over for dinner in the first few days that meant so much. Having gotten to know them a little better, it was a huge relief to have familiar faces around campus as we settled in. It is amazing to see how far we’ve come from those first lonely weeks. We now know the names of pretty much all the people who live and/or work on campus, and we are known to them.

It has taken us an entire year to start to feel at home. Through a difficult pregnancy and many other trying circumstances, friendships started to emerge. Community became evident as people reached out and extended kindness, from offering babysitting to bringing by meals. We were humbled by the extent of kindness we received.

We feel like we are just now able to raise our heads above our immediate circumstances and start to be friends to others. One thing we missed the majority of last year was a strong sense of belonging in a community. It turns out, this was felt by many, for a myriad of reasons. It was nobody’s fault; each family had a different set of circumstances and challenges to deal with. As we talked to people this summer, this turned out to be true for staff, for the families of students here, and for veterans and newbies alike. There were fun glimpses of how much we all desired it (Soup Night, anyone?), but overall, community was the one thing many had to forgo as each person or family retreated into their own shells, in full survival mode. We are all human, made to crave community, but sometimes we are just too exhausted (physically, emotionally, spiritually) to actually cultivate it.

The new teachers and their families have now all officially arrived. As a family, we made a commitment to welcome them. Most of the summer we were one of the few families left on campus. We were given physical and mental space to be rejuvenated, to ponder, to process. We felt it was time to give back, to join the living, and bring something to the table. So we got very literal and decided to invite everyone to our table. We wanted to share a meal with each new person who arrived in the last few weeks, to give them some faces to recognize around campus, to make ourselves available in any way we could to help them adjust.

This was hard on me (Audrey). It is not easy for me to reach out and make friends. I feel like I’m in seventh grade all over again, lots of awkwardness and self-consciousness. Plus, I have a strong tendency toward perfectionism that often sabotages my best ideas.

Recently, I came across this blog that gave me a new, and refreshing perspective on hospitality, the kind I really want to excel in, where our home is inviting at all times, a place where people are comfortable and can find rest. The author, Christie Purifoy, wrote the following as if she was inside my head. It is time for me to readjust my thinking about what it means to welcome someone:

To open the door on my imperfect life is a sacrifice. It is less time-consuming than party planning and less expensive than grilled steak, but it requires the sacrifice of my pride. The sacrifice of my deep need to be admired. Sharing the glittery surface of life requires a great deal of effort, but, somehow, it is much less exacting; it is much less painful than welcoming you into the space in which I actually live out my days. This is hospitality that offers my life without gilding or glitter or decorative sprinkles. It isn’t the only kind of hospitality, but it is the one kind of hospitality that I am coming to see as indispensable.

I encourage you to read the whole thing-it’s funny and beautiful and so true. So, we opened up our house to 10 different new teachers and their families. Sometimes it was cleaner than others, we always just ate “normal” dinner food, no multiple courses or fancy anything. Most of the time we even forgot to light the candle in the middle of the table. And it didn’t even matter. We did, however, get to hear interesting stories, and meet genuine people who, like us a year ago, are just excited to be here and to see what in store for them this coming year.

We benefitted from their infectious excitement, we laughed together, we tried to show them what community can be. There is no great lesson here, except that we extended a hand of friendship because we know how important friendship is. Ironically, almost every person and family that is new to campus has more overseas experience than we do—many of them have actually lived here in Kenya before (I think God knew that setting us up as the experts for anyone to consult would be ridiculous, and He saved us the embarrassment of having to try to fill that role). Because of this, we are free to be ourselves, to be welcoming, to be available and around.

And so we will continue. We will commit to this community because that is where we have been placed for the time being. Community is an on-going relationship between people. We wanted to set the tone for the year, to encourage more opportunities to strengthen ties. We are having a BBQ on Saturday; so far 57 (!!!) people have RSVP’d and it’s only Wednesday. Oh boy. Be careful what you ask for! We will wipe down the bathrooms, heat up the grill (and borrow another!), and make sure there are plenty of serviettes. We will also probably stash away baskets of laundry that didn’t get folded.

But this is great, that is 57 people who feel the same way we do, who look forward to time spent strengthening our community. Plus, with that many people in and out of the house, nobody could possibly notice all our window-smudges, right? (I see you window smudges, but I have an infant and I choose sleep right now over your eradication.) There will be loudness. And running. There will be crumbs. And mud. So much mud. And did we mention that a sizable patch of our backyard is currently infested with nasty biting safari ants?

Here’s to practicing imperfect hospitality. To offering a place where people can be themselves. To providing community instead of waiting for it to come to us.