It’s been really great to be one of oh, say, about 12 white people in this small city where everyone’s business is quite literally, everyone else and their mother’s business. There’s really nothing like being yelled at, “White girl, you’re getting wet!” while bike riding in a rainstorm. Yes, I know, thank you. I can feel it. What if I am choosing to ride in the rain? What if I enjoy bike riding in the rain? And if I am not choosing to, and I’m not enjoying it, then that probably means I’m disgruntled because I’m 15 minutes late to a meeting and all my crap is soaked – so STOP YELLING AT ME! Kind sir with many rasta dreadlocks wrapped around your head, my rainy bike rides are really none of your business.
I am beginning to accept the degree of my incompetence, I think: how incapable I am at controlling things, how my thoughtlessness results in hurting people, how easy it is to fail others’ inborn and sometimes unexplained expectations, and of course, how limited I am in my skills and knowledge of “how to do things.” The “how to do things” part covers most of what people usually call “common sense” – after spending some time recently with my younger sister Martha, I would guess that this deficiency is genetic, but I can’t be sure. In any case, it inhibits things like my cooking skills, my card playing skills, my general wit, and of course, “getting things done” in the workplace. Well, maybe that has more to do with motivation and investment, but whatever.
While all of this is humiliating even as I write now, there has been nothing as humiliating (and correct my common sense if I’m wrong, but I’m using the word humiliating as in, “it incites humility”) as living in an intentional community. Jeepers, talk about inescapable confrontation with one’s own very human and not-so-capable self. I can say, knowing that my favorite part of community is the second best aspect of my life, that the worst—the hardest, most uncomfortable, most frustrating—parts of community living have actually given birth to some of the most meaningful experiences and conversations in my life.
Basically my experience of community living has looked, at different points in time, one of two ways: either I’ve been wandering around the house, internalizing my perceptions that I’m annoying and can’t do anything right OR I’ve been in a conversation where I’m being told that I’m annoying and can’t do anything right. I’m kidding, kind of – what I mean to say is that community living, for me, has been a humbling affirmation of all the complications that my feelings, experiences, and beliefs bring to the table. Those added to all the feelings, experiences, and beliefs of my housemates – all of which are equally as valid as my own – makes for some pretty permanent knots and kinks in our relationships.
In any case, I write this today (yes, I’m finally getting to my “point”) to share some of what’s been going on in my life. Not a smooth segue, I know, but what’s been happening over the course of the past six months has contributed to these insights on community living, and the feeling of vulnerability that’s associated with it.
As you (all four of you who read this) probably are aware by now, Trey and I have decided to get married. We are elated, not only because, in the wise words of my good friend Jenny Bilsten Woodrow, we’ve “found someone we want to hang out with for, like, forever,” but because we both feel as though this is an important step in our respective spiritual walks, and soon, in our joined service to God. Discerning marriage was a confusing and muddled process at times, but sorting through the thoughts and ideas surrounding both my fears of commitment and my compatibility with Trey has been so rewarding. I feel remarkably at peace about my life with Trey, and all that God has planned for us. When it comes down to it, I can rely on Trey to be by my side in my efforts to love God, and Trey knows that I will be there likewise for him.
All that said, this decision has of course made a splash. I mean, six months ago, I was still debating whether or not I wanted to stay in Belize because I was so unhappy – and since, I’ve not only met the love of my life, but have decided to get married? Just eight months ago I questioned God and declared that life was just easier if I didn’t believe – and now I’ve come to Jesus, yearning to feel loved, desperately so, and trying to get to know God as deeply as humanly possible? Yes, these changes are sudden and, in the way that they’ve been sewn together, inexplicable except if I trust that God has put them there with great intention. And I do.
But in the reality of my circumstances, this newness of my spirit is hard to convey. In community, for example, it’s been heart wrenching to see the ways that my happiness has inflicted discomfort on others: the seriousness of my relationship with Trey is not an advisable practice in intentional community living, and my spiritual conversion has been defined by an affection for Protestant doctrine. Moreover, it’s aggravating to see the ways that my own pride has come between protecting my relationship with Trey and developing relationships with my two other community mates, and also in my attempts to explain my spiritual regeneration. How is it that my heart hurts for these circumstances and the unhappiness or discomfort they’ve created for others, yet selfishly, I have found a deep joy in their very essence? Complicated, I tell ya.
Even beyond community however, the implications of these changes in my life have created tension and confusion in my family. I understand so clearly how surprised they have been with my seeming fickleness, but that’s just it: I think I’ve been fickle my whole life – that’s the Molly they know – and now, for the first time, I’m not. But, this is just the beginning and there’s really no way to prove that these changes in heart and spirit are lasting. And anyways, I don’t think that those things are really mine to prove.
Kind of like the rasta man on the side of the road who so aptly pointed out to me that it was raining, or like the people waiting for the bus outside of the post office who like to remind me to lock my bike as I’m wrapping the chain around my wheel, or like the students who like to tell me that I have chalk on my butt or tell me I’m fat, or even like the grocery store clerks who look intently at each of my items and sometimes even ask me what I’m planning on doing with them, hearing—perhaps for the first time ever—what my most beloved friends, family members, and community mates are concerned for in my life is all at once embarrassing, frustrating, and even though I don’t want to admit it, helpful. With the exception of a few creepy men who have said things to me here on the streets of Belize City that aren’t really worth documenting, all of these people have expressed themselves from a place that falls along a spectrum of care. Okay, maybe not the kids who call me fat, but everyone else. Most of all though, I have felt in the presence of these tough questions and even tougher answers the love of my family: my mom, my sisters, my dad; my community mates. Even when it's hurt.
There is much about being open with people and sharing yourself that seems scary, and I will attest that such a fear is a legitimate one: the risk, and my result for one, is that you bare your soul and instead of being wrapped in warmth and love and told that it is beautiful, it is poked and prodded. If I took one valuable lesson away from my business degree though, (besides LIFO, FIFO, and pension accounting, of course) it is that the greater the risk, the greater the reward. That is not a necessarily conditional statement in that order—great risk can obviously lead to great loss, too—but in reverse, it is: in order to have great reward, great risks are necessary. And I believe in a God who provides for us, for me, when I take great risks in His name. Moving to
