We celebrated Independence Day with family, friends, food, and fireworks. One of the things I noticed yesterday, was that we had gathered with a "community."
Some of the friends, who came yesterday, we've known for a very long time. Some are newer friends, but all are a people we like and choose to include in our lives.
These are people that we'd drop what we're doing and go help them if there was need. Some, we see every week. One does his laundry here. A few of the friends from yesterday, are friends of my parents, but only acquaintance friends to us. One couple though, I could see becoming much closer friends to Tim and I also.
When we were changing churches four years ago, we started attending church where friends of our were fellowshipping. We had to cross the river and go into a different county to attend. We liked it very much, but after about six months, we realized that it wasn't going to work long term, because we would never be a part of that community. When people would meet us and ask where we lived, they would say, "Oh, over there. I don't know anything about that area." You could see the interest in us fade. Like we lived in a foreign country. We left and found our church.
Our church is about 15 minutes from our house. It's an easy drive. Most people live close by. It's easy to popover to help with a project, attend a prayer meeting, help with a women's event. They are our community, and in our community!
There was family talk yesterday, theological discussions, and only a tiny bit of politics.
There was a lot of good food. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, marinated grilled chicken, potato salad, pasta salad, cucumber salad, jello salad, fruit, red beet eggs (very Lancaster County), chips. Then there were desserts! Ice cream, apple pie, lemon dessert that was cupcake like but smaller, and a fruit tart.
Kyle had been at his friends' house for the afternoon, but came back with one of the friends for fire works. He'd been a part of the community, that he is building in his life, playing Ultimate frisbee.
My dad had bought a nice package of fireworks at Costco, and we did those first.
Then Nate and Wes went out to our 2 acre pasture and set the big boys off!
The fireflies were giving us quite a show last night as well.
Not everyone stayed for Fireworks. Those of us who were here enjoyed them very much!
When we finally went inside last night, some of my family, had already divided up the meat, put the left overs away, and washed dishes. I had very little to do before I went to bed.
My work had been on the front end. I made the potato and jello salads, I made the burger patties, I organized the day, and made sure we had enough paper products, etc. Tim and Wes grilled the meats, my girls and friends loaded the food table, and set up the cooler and the drinks.
It was a good day, made better by who was with us, and I trust they had a great day, too!
Do you have a community of people that you can depend on, and with whom you do life? I hope you do!
6 comments:
Sounds like a wonderful day!
Not particularly... I despise calling in help (pride?) and try to remain as independent as possible. I did ask my neighbor for help climbing a ladder and replacing a vent. (I had fallen off the ladder by missing the bottom step.🤦🏻♀️) I know that your way of operating is much better and far more what The Lord has in mind.
I know you all had fun watching the fireworks and fireflies. I just tried to get by with all that the best I could. Ha!
sounds like fun
Such a lovely day. I've experienced similar holidays in the past.
I used to think we had that kind of community but I'm not so sure anymore. Our families are messy...both my husband & I were born to unwed mothers, our parents are all gone now & we don't ever see anyone else in our biological families. My husband never knew his dad. Mine died when I was 17. But when we married, we were a christian couple doing the best we could to make a christian home with little experience about what that meant. We tried to make the church our family.
Now, after 35 yrs of marriage, going through two church splits in those yrs & now, not really having a church because the chaos in the local churches is like what we separated ourselves from when we chose to leave our families to try to form a healthy family of our own.....we are not sure if community on this earth really exists. We do have christian friends & our closest friends don't go to church with us. My husband says he doesn't want to go to church with our friends because that seems to kill our friendships. I guess we don't have the energy anymore to jump through the expected hoops that 'doing life' entails. If we don't jump through the hoops...we are ostracized. So there you have it. From my experience community doesn't exist for people outside the inner circles. We just recently (since March) began attending a church very close to us...to try again. But I'm not sure we have the strength to go through it all again.
You are so lucky to be surrounded by so many good people. I had hoped our church family would be like that, but it didn't turn out that way. Instead, our little beach community has become our go to "family". We've known people here for 20+ years and everyone is always willing to help..or socialize. Just last week my husband changed a neighbor's tire. It went flat in front of our house. She was so touched by his offer to do so, she surprised him with a little treat yesterday. It was quite unnecessary, but lovely just the same.
You and Tim have community because you invest in community. We all should take a lesson from that. I have to say that our large family is our main "community," but we are trying to be more intentional about investing in our church community . . . in addition to worshiping together, that is.
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