A Community Project

One life's most significant realities has been powerfully reinforced to us since Nicole's accident. It is that life is a community project. We were never designed to live, an isolated, independent, autonomous, and self-sufficient existence. Suffering awakes you from all of your delusions of independent capability and reminds you that you are woven into a web of interdependent relationships that you cannot live without. This truth has been powerfully reinforced to us in the days since Nicole's accident. We have found ourselves needing to depend on a host of people known and unknown in order to get through this difficult moment and provide for Nicole all she needs for a full recovery. And we are so thankful that we have been surrounded by so much help. We have not gone through this situation alone!

Yesterday, as we all began to understand what life in our home would be like as Nikki struggles to recover, there were powerful reminders of community. Let me list some:

- The day began with a basket of coffee, tea, and warm muffins, delivered to the front steps of our house.
- The mail brought a stack of wonderfully encouraging cards from around the country.
- A friend delivered a prepared supper for us to enjoy.
- Several people suggested ways that they might be able to physically help us.
- Money was given so, on one of those exceptionally busy days, we could grab a take-out meal (enough for more than one).

Each thing was encouraging, not only for the specific help it provided, but because it reminded us that we are not alone in this moment. We are very, very grateful for the love that has surrounded us! Yet, there is a rub to interdependent community. The community that loves and serves you, isn't under your control. Care providers don't always do what you would like for them to do when you would like for them to do it. I spent the good portion of a day attempting to secure medication that, if I was ruling the world, would have been awaiting my arrival. The help of friends and family isn't always dispensed at the moment you feel most needy. And since the community you are dependent on is populated by imperfect people, there are disappointments along the way. People known and unknown don't always follow through. So, in all of your thankfulness, you have to guard your heart against entitlement, demandingness, criticism, and bitterness. Community, this side of heaven, is not only essential and something for which to be thankful, it is also unpredictable and messy.

Finally, we are also very aware that there are times in each day when the surrounding commmunity goes home and we are very much alone in our difficulty. Nicole is the one who has been seriously injured, no one can step in and bear her pain. Luella and I are her parents, no one lives near her, hour by hour, as we do. In the middle of powerful reminders of community there are stark experiences of aloneness. It is in these moments that we need to remind ourselves that even when physical, human community is absent, we are not alone. There is One who is with us. He has suffered more than we will ever suffer. He understands what we are going through, he will not turn his back and he refuses to leave.