Building meaningful relationships through the church community

I am nervous and giddy with excitement over this cell member who is coming over to my house.

It has been a year and a half since I moved here and I hardly ever get any visitors. The past ten months alone, it has been zero. Before then, only three, including my mother. It has been largely manageable but in the last month and particularly last week, it was more intense than I could bear it.

During our cell meeting yesterday, I shared that I felt incredibly lonely on account of not having friends here; specifically, friendships with the potential to grow into meaningful relationships. For me, that looks like tenderness, depth of conversation, openness of spirit, and growing spiritually. It means a tribe within whose environment I can refine my nature and habits to reflect the person of Christ, which is having it reflected within my nature, a bumper harvest of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

I need especially to learn meekness and gentility- both in attitude and in word (I discovered that I had resumed cursing again, after years of dropping the habit since a friend lovingly pointed it out to me two years ago, when I visited a former teacher of mine at the University and he texted me after I had left his office that he had “heard a lot of the f word” (sic) in our conversation); I need to learn self-control, and I need to practice faith, so that my emotions do not peak and drop at every event that happens in my life.

Our cell leader was more than happy to re-emphasize the purpose of cell, and thanked me for not keeping this to myself. Within the meeting, another member and I had exchanged numbers and made plans to keep up with one another. Now this girl just exceeded herself. She called me today “Just to check on me” and we’ve planned to meet up on Sunday after church- she’ll be coming to my house. I am so happy about the fact.

I understand the self-love movement and all, and it makes sense to me in a lot of ways, but there’s a part of me that really craves community; and not just any kind of community but one that is truly meaningful in its purest sense. One that challenges me to really be and do better, not by the standards of the world, but by God’s standard- a faultless one when done in its purest form.

And that is why I love Church. When done well, it really does bring healing and a lot of good things.

It feels really good, and it is incredibly healing to be on the receiving end of love and care.