Don't Mess with Texas

I went to a party a week ago. Really, almost two weeks ago, and really, it will have been a month before you read this. I went to a party in Austin, Texas at Jen Hatmaker's house. For those who do not know, Jen is an author, speaker, mom, wife, and everyone's best friend, plus she helps lead an awesome church that is basically being Jesus except with cowboy boots. 

Apparently, the house I partied at was made famous on HGTV, but since I only get to watch HGTV in hotel rooms (we watched a lot of it going to Texas and back) I would not know that detail.

She invited her launch team to a party. I am still amazed at that fact, and I am still amazed that I picked up and just drove to get there. It's still surreal.

Everyone else involved seems to have written about it immediately. As in, they must have gone back to their hotel rooms in Austin and blogged at midnight, people, because that's how fast some of them managed to get these reflections posted.

I did not.

Yes, we really drove there. And loved it.

I went back to my room, meandered around Texas for another two days, drove back to Chicago in another three, and spent a week returning to life and processing what had happened. Because I am All. About. Processing. And not so much about getting things done right away. Let's assume it's all for good reasons and not basic procrastination.

Being on the launch team has been a gift. In five months' time, a group of 500 of us have somehow made a community online that defied Christian stereotypes. We are a people of random ages, backgrounds, political theories, theologies, and colors. We disagree. But we don't fight. We don't call names. We don't compare. We do pray for one another, encourage one another, and mourn with one another. We even give one another our time, money, and coffee mugs. That's community, people. And until the party, most of us had never met.

Now, here's the thing. I'm an introvert. I don't do parties. I don't do people I've never met. In large quantities. E-V-E-R.

So this was hard. I loved it, but it was hard. (Most lovely things are.) Sometimes I socialized and hugged and told stories and listened. Sometimes, I sat and just watched the buzz around me. I'm not the person to sit on Jen's porch and take selfies. I'm not the one who will approach her to talk about life, even though I feel (like so many others) that we could be bffs. I'm not the girl who will sit in the middle of a table of strangers and draw them in.

The day after the party, many of us went to the Hatmakers' church. (I know, she would hate having it called her church. It's Jesus' church. But it's easier for identification purposes.) She made a comment during the sermon about it looking like a sorority house in the congregation. And it kind of did.

Which is exactly the place on earth I would feel the least comfortable.

I am so not a sorority kind of girl.

In the book we launched, Jen talks about community. She tells tales of how we have the tools and the ability to reach out where we are, with who we are and what we have, to create the community the world craves. And I realized something about that while I was taking my dear sweet time processing what the party had meant.

I love those women, and I will continue to love them and support them and do life with them. Even those I never see again. I am so grateful for their presence and for the party and for the woman who brought us there.

But community needs to happen where I am. It needs to happen on my back porch, in my church, in my coffee shop or library or park, where I live. The point of the book was to push us out into creating that, not to make us comfortable with a safe group of people we don't have to see on a daily basis. That is a wonderful thing too—but it's not the main thing. It can springboard us into the main thing by encouraging us along, but it isn't the thing itself.

Wouldn't you know, looking again at her book today, that's exactly what she says,

“Online life is no substitute for practiced, physical presence, and it will never replace someone looking you in the eye, padding around your kitchen in bare feet, making you take a blind taste test on various olives, walking in your front door without knocking.”

My community needs to be where I am. And that's even harder and scarier than a strange farmhouse in Texas.

Because its up to me. Up to my insecurities, imperfections, and fears. But that's the point.

"When your worn-out kitchen table hosts good people and good conversation, when it provides a safe place to break bread and share wine, your house becomes a sanctuary, holy as a cathedral. If you have a porch, then you have an altar to gather around. If you can make a pot of chili and use a cell phone, then you can create community. If you want to wait until your house is perfect and you aren’t nervous, then just forget it. This is an imperfect apparatus, thank goodness. It requires people with true faces, courageously being seen.” (Jen Hatmaker, For the Love)

I can make chili. (I don't like to eat it, but I can make it. It's one of the few things I like to make.) I have a porch falling-apart-deck. I can be seen.

At our house, we have a formula to test how well people know us. Appliance repairpersons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and salespeople will knock on the front door. Friends will knock on the back door. Real friends will walk in it.

In October, I want to focus on this idea of community. How do you create community? Please share your ideas, things that have worked, things that have been disasters, and thoughts for the future. I would love to see your creativity and questions!

Absolute proof I was in Texas.