I wrote in my very first post about realizing how much my community means to me, but I haven’t done a lot of talking about that since.  I’d like to take this chance to do so.

To know about my community, you need to know that there are many different parts of it.  I have a work community at school, I have a friend-community of people I know from college and through Bear, I have a church community, and I have family.  They’re all different communities and most of them don’t know each other at all, but they are all so incredibly important to me.

The community I want to focus on today is my church family.  This is one I have taken the most for granted.  I’ve always known that they were my family and they’ve seen me grow up into the woman I am today, but I never knew just how much of a real family they were until two summers ago.  While leading what would later be known as the mission trip from hell, I started to get a bit of a feverish feeling.  I blew it off as being overworked, but rested a bit when the mission trip was over.  Instead of getting better, it got worse.  Finally, I went to an urgent care clinic where some dramatic x-rays revealed the pneumonia that had spread to absolutely fill my lungs.  Needless to say, I did not go on the Senior High mission trip.  My parents, however, did.  I stayed home, resting, getting better, until one day I finally felt well enough to go grab some food with friends.  Treecko drove us to the grocery store and we were just pulling into the parking lot when I got a call from the clinic that had run my blood test.  I had sepsis and had to go to the hospital immediately.

That was terrifying for me (I believe I’ve mentioned my fear of hospitals?) and the idea of driving myself was simply not possible.  I called my parents, first, and they immediately started driving back from Austin, but I had to get to the hospital NOW.  So, I called a friend from church.  She not only dropped everything to drive me to the hospital, but she stayed until my parents got there.  She comforted me in my fear, she chatted with me while I panicked, and she was a true life-saver that day.  And that was the day it hit me that my church family is far more of a family than I had ever realized.

It hit me again when I told a different friend from church that I was buying a house.  Her immediate reaction was “We’ll have to have a pounding!”  Now, if you’re not from the South, a pounding is a type of housewarming party where everyone brings a pound of something (butter, sugar, flour) to help fill your pantry!  The fact that her immediate reaction to my good news was “Let’s celebrate and help you!” really cements the place of this precious parish in my heart.  Sure, we sometimes fight like family, but we love like family, too.