5 Minute Friday and The Grove: Visit and Status

Words have tremendous power. Power to heal. Power to hurt. Power to open our eyes to truth. I love words and their power and the places that flinging my words far on a screen have taken me and the people that I have met in the process.

Evey Friday I link up with with Five Minute Friday community to write free and fearless for 5 minutes. Lately I've been making the task a bit more challenging by joining with the Velvet Ashes community over in The Grove to take on the prompt for the week.

This is a tough combo prompt this week. Here goes nuttin'. 

My 5 minutes on "Visit" and "Status":

In our eight years of marriage we have always lived one foot in and one foot out of every community that we've been a par of. Always waiting for God to move and take us far. At times it has made us hold those around us at arm's length.

When we moved home from overseas we lived in an area that was not first on our list of places to live. The neighborhood was older and there was a lot of porch sittin' that went on when the temperature peeked above 60 degrees. I was a few months pregnant when we moved there, but wouldn't be held back from pruning the hedges or really doing much of anything.

I thought that the neighbors should be the ones to come over and introduce themselves, but instead they sat and stared from across the street as I waddled my big bellied self around the yard. I felt like a visitor. The new girl in town on display.

Often we expect others to reach out and abide by rules of politeness and welcome us. And, yes, we do need to be those that welcome as Jesus did. Sometimes I think we're waiting for someone to come along and make community a nice and neat affair, but in reality we are the ones best suited to speak, lead, organize and create spaces, places and things that feed and free souls right where we are.

Sometimes it is easier to hold community at arm's length and just pretend to be a visitor. It is easy to point fingers and say well if this would just happen then I could fully invest and be invested in. Or we decide that what we are isn't really what is needed.

What you are, right where you are is what is needed in your community and if you don't offer it up then there will be something missing. 

We moved nearly a year ago and are attempting to put down roots. We're done being visitors in our own home.

{That was a tough one!}