To Community or Not Community that is the Question?

I wanted to give a shout out to my community group and just say thank you guys for being faithful to build into and love each other. Eight years ago when I started going to Watermark (our church) I was in a pretty lonely spot. I had just broke up with my boyfriend of 5 years after moving to Dallas to be with him and everything I was involved in except Watermark was tied to him. I didn't really have any friends that weren't in his circle, so needless to say I was scared and all alone in this big city. Watermark had just started doing these groups called community groups. I was plugged into a pretty mixed group, there were 4 married couples and one other single who was 55 and male. It probably wasn't a great fit but I was desperate to have people in my life, so I was very content. About 4 months into it the group decided to break into 2 groups. It was encouraged by the church because they wanted to make room for more people to be in community and needed the leaders. I was devastated I remember thinking it felt like my group was going through a divorce. It was a split for all good reasons, but I loved everyone and I didn't want to have to say good-bye. It all worked out and eventually I recovered, but it was somewhat of a challenge. Probably a year later I decided to lead my own group of young women in my life stage. So I went through some great training provided by Watermark and then was assigned 11, 20 somethings. It was so amazing getting to know these Godly women in my life stage. Well, probably 5 months later Watermark decided no more community groups, we would now have Shepherds. Once again the heart behind this change was good and wise but it was really hard because we were encouraged to find our community where we were serving. I don't think any of the 11 of use were serving in the same area. I didn't really know exactly what to do, should I disband our group or should we just continue to meet and not follow the counsel of our leaders. It is easy to get spread thin in our church with many amazing ministry so I really was conflicted, but I decided to keep the group together and not worry about the fact we were not serving in the same area. Over the next 4 years some of the women came and went but 4 of us stayed faithful to live in authentic community. However, in this life stage a lot of changes occurred. 2 of us were married and I had my first baby. It was wonderful meeting with these awesome women, but Cory and I didn't have community together. We got involved in a foundation group for newly married people which was fun and our leaders were truly a gift from the Lord, I really don't know exactly where we would be without their mentoring, but we really didn't feel connected to the rest of the group in a deep way. We enjoyed the people but lived 45 minutes from most of them and trying to do life together just seemed extremely exhausting. We learned from this experience that we really wanted to be in close proximity to whoever we decided to do community with, so we contacted the ministry leaders and they told us there weren't any church attenders in our area looking for community. We explored the option of leaving our current church thinking maybe we needed to plug into a body of believes in our area. We prayed a lot and felt sure Watermark was where we needed to be, but there was still the challenge of finding people that knew us as one, not as individuals who were now married. The community pastor called and told us that there was a community group not to far from us that he had talked to about us joining. We were told the guys were good with it, but they needed to talk with the ladies. We know a few of the couples in the group and thought they would be fun to get to know on a deeper level, but about a week later we were told they really didn't think adding us was a great fit for the group. My insecurities were definitely exposed, but I really tried to believe it wasn't a personal thing and they were trying to do what was wise for their group. I'm not going to lie it stung a little. I remember telling Cory maybe we don't need community together maybe the way we are doing things is just fine. I had since joined a mommy group were I was building great relationships and felt like I had enough deep relationships anyway. Cory however, was needing men to challenge him and he was feeling very discouraged. I remember praying often Lord if you desire for us to live in community why is this always so hard. We desire to live this way so why can't we find a group. I really believe now that all the challenges I faced up to this point were God exposing patterns in my life that were destructive, and He was all along the way putting me in situations where I was able to grow but not so fast that I wasn't able to endure the challenges. I remember talking to our mommy group about possibly forming a couples group, but not everyone went to our church, some already had groups and the husbands were all very different, so this didn't seem like a great solution. We were meeting with one couple and going through some parenting curriculum and that was such an encouraging time, but Cory still felt like as a husband he wasn't being sharpened and he really felt like that was the most important role he played. I knew he was right but I was enjoying our current situation and I was quiet honestly tired of growing. The Lord however was faithful as always to show me how much I really needed to get out of what was comfortable. I really don't remember exactly how things transpired, but we started having a lot of trouble and it seemed heightened when we were around this particular couple. I was really having a hard time respecting Cory which is a whole other story so I won't go into detail because this is already running on and on, but all that to say almost every time we hung out with our friends we would get into a knock down drag out when we got home. Somewhere in the mist of this we decided to add more couples to our meeting time, but none of the other couples had children so that made talking about parenting very awkward and then one of the couples who was pregnant miscarried and it felt like we were throwing salt in a wound. The group meeting time became something I completely dreaded going to for many reasons. We didn't necessarily have commonalities with the group, the relationship we had with the couple we really enjoyed was very awkward now and I really didn't understand that and we never really discussed anything deep unless Cory and I were willing and then it felt like we were always talking about our problems which seemed to compound everything. I was extremely discouraged and really thought how is this supposed to be something that is good. We really were trying and the harder we tried the worse things seemed to get. Finally I couldn't do it anymore and we were going to say no more group. We were meeting that night to call it quits and one of the couples that never seemed to come showed up and told us they were going to get divorced. I was so thankful we were there and we had an opportunity to encourage them not to give up. They pursued some great ministries to help their situation and seem to be doing much better now. We continued meeting but my heart was really battling wanting to be involved. Then another couple informed us there was infidelity in the past and they had to struggle through that. It really helped me put my trouble with Cory in perspective and we were able to encourage that couple as well. During all this Cory and I were exploring moving to Colorado, so he was meeting with other men who were also contemplating heading to Colorado. He was being sharpened by this group and challenged to quit complaining about his marriage and surrender it to the Lord. I can honestly say in those few months my husband grow beyond anything I could have ever hoped for, so I really saw the importance of Cory being in relationships that challenged him. He was co leading a Summit group (the men's bstudy at our church) with a guy he was wired very similarly to and so they tossed around the idea of doing community together. We prayed about this decision for a few months and then decided to tell our group we were moving on. It was a very scary thing for me, because I am a people pleaser and hate to hurt anyone, but I knew for our marriage this was necessary. Not everyone in the group totally understood, but we tried hard to communicate we really appreciate them and that it wasn't a personal thing but that it was important if we were going to do community that we were in a group that really challenged us as well. We had our first meeting with our new group a few weeks later and discussed in great detail our expectations of the group. We all seemed to be on the same page and I was excited, but not getting my hopes up. Probably not the best way to enter into a situation, but my biggest struggle is rejection and so I do a very unhealthy thing of guarding so I don't get hurt. God is in the process of refining me in this area, but I am going kicking and screaming. I don't want to be this way, but it is a patterned developed over 32 years of many lost relationships and so currently this is my biggest struggle. Okay, back to my story. Anyway, like I said I was excited but guarded. Over the past 9 months there have been times that I have been encouraged and there have been probably equal times I have said gosh, life is hard in community and why am I doing this again. I can say though the current way our group shares all their hurts has helped me understand that our relationship with the Lord is not about having it all together. I know that intellectually but sometimes being performance driven I fall back into being a good christian instead of a surrendered Christ follower. The way we have worked through conflict when we don't like things has created such a safe environment for me. I love that if I've done something to offend someone I can trust they will come to me and we can talk it out. And Tuesday night I was so encouraged to see our little ones playing together and really building a family together. So thank you all so much for who you are and how you are sharpening me even when you are not aware of the impact you have in my life.
love jamie