Life is never normal. I'm 22, almost 23, and should know this by now. It never fails that just when things seem to arrive at that oh-so-coveted status of "normal," things, whether it be family, friends, or something else, a curveball comes screaming out of the void and shakes my carefully ordered world.
A curveball once again threw me off of my game this past Tuesday night when I got the call from my mom that, "I need you to get into the car now and come out to dad's work...we think that he's going to commit suicide." At that point, I was in the car with my girlfriend, Ashley. We rushed out to my dad's work to find my mom, my brother, and my sister along with an officer searching the premises in sub 30 degree weather. Over the course of the next several hours, I would experience true community in a way that I never had seen previously in my life.
As the night progressed, not only did more police officers continue to show up, one by one, at my dad's work, but several people from my church community also came to provide support for our family. My dad was eventually found wandering around his work. Whether or not he was serious about committing suicide, I don't know. What caused the whole incident--irrelevant at this point.
However, what has come out of this entire ordeal has been on my mind for some time. That is the concept of community. As my family has continued to try and understand what happened and how to best get our minds around this situation, I have been continually amazed and astounded at the community that my family and I am in. In my family's past, we've seldom experienced a group of people committed to walking through things with us. The last time that I can remember other people taking time out of their busy schedules to get down in the muck and mire with us was well over a decade ago. It is only in this most recent familial crisis, as an adult, that I have experienced the love of God and true community in the way that it was meant to be.
Much like Moses of old, the community that I am now experiencing is holding up my arms as me and my family fight for emotional, physical, and psychological health. It means so much to me now, to understand as grown man, to understand what true community means, and the cost of being part of one.
It is in this circumstance that I am finally realizing how important it is to have a solid community of people around me, providing support and encouragement. Perhaps not even "finally realizing..." maybe the correct phrase would be that I am coming into a revelation of community--one that reflects a biblical perspective. Instead of being cast to the proverbial wolves and being forced to work things out on our own, our family has been surrounded by unconditional love. I see now that this kind of love by the community has a great cost. Individuals have freely and unbegrudgingly
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