The power of community

I feel the love.

Thank you--all of you--for your responses to the previous post. You guys made me cry--again--this time because each of you wants so much to live out the calling of Jesus to love, to include, to make a place at the table for all those who feel left out. I really, really, really like that about you.

Before I leave this particular subject, I have to tell you that I went back to AntiqueMommy and read through the 148 (148!) responses to her post on infertility. I didn't read every single one of the responses word for word (after all, 148!), but the single note that resonated through all of them was this: "Don't forget about me. Hurt with me. Cry with me. Listen to me. And please, please, please don't assume that you know it all about me." Some of the responses weren't about infertility at all--there was a reply from a girl who regularly feels the sting of racism; one girl wrote about the struggle of being a single young adult woman who doesn't really have a "place" at church and who feels barren and alone and who worries and wonders about her future, having to wear the label "single." And so many others . . .

If I gave the impression that I don't join the "foot-in-the-mouth club" on a regular basis myself, that would be wrong. As much as I flinch sometimes at the untimely or inappropriate comments made about a myriad of subjects, I have made many, many such verbal goofs and gaffs and downright blunders myself.

The grace in this all is that despite the ways we sometimes prick and wound each other with our words (and our carnations, of all things!), we still cling to the power of our life together in Jesus. There is room for all us--especially those of us in the foot-in-the-mouth club, at the foot of the cross, and the very fact that all these women could pour out their suffering and their loss in the public forum of a blog is evidence of the power of community--the kind of loving community that is designed by God himself.