The hard part

On Friday, I was emailing with a friend about community. I made the comment that community is always changing, it's just obvious when you move to a new place to start over. But I promised, you find new community and settle into your place.

But I glossed over the hard part, and I was quickly reminded of it that night. There was an event at the big church in town for 20-somethings on Friday night. This is the first event like that I had heard about there, so I knew I needed to take advantage of it and go.

What I forgot about is that I would have to walk into a room of 25 people I didn't know and mingle. It felt like everybody knew each other, and there was an "in" crowd. I did meet a couple of people, but it was one of those moments where you feel lonely in a crowd of people. And all I wanted to do was go back to Virginia and enjoy a fun Friday night with my group of friends there.

But I remembered that in Virginia I had walked into similar situations. I ended up at a pool party where I knew just a few people and felt like an outsider. But that's where I met Megan. She got my number and started inviting me over to try her cakes or to have dinner with her and became a close friend.  

And one Sunday I was sitting by myself in Sunday School, and a girl named Katherine sat down beside me and ended up inviting me to her Bible study. She became one of my best friends, and that Bible study was my community there.

It was at that Bible study that I met Andrea who got my email address and became my social coordinator and another one of my best friends. I went to a dinner party at her house, and I had a lot of fun. I remember leaving her house and thinking, "I'm going to be OK here."

But it took walking into those hard situations to get to that point. It's easy to bury myself in work or sit on my couch on a Saturday night watching movies on Netflix. Putting myself out there and letting in new people is the hard part, but it's also the only way to create that new community.

But the good news is I've decided on a church. The people are really friendly, and I met a girl last week that invited me to her community group. I couldn't actually make it, but I got to have dinner with her and she invited me to her Halloween party. I went to the party on Saturday, and it was completely different from the Friday night party. I met people and enjoyed some great conversation. I left feeling like I'm on the right track to finding my community.