Three Nails

i was talking with martha last week about the concept of a community carrying you. it’s a bit of christian-ese i suppose, but it’s the idea of laying yourself bare before your community and letting them “carry” you, your burdens together as Christ does for us…as i understand it. Galatians says carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

now i have a picture of what this looks like for us individually, in one on one relationships, calling the person up, checking up on them, listening, praying, loving them as Christ loves them. i’m right on board with being a part of that communally for us as a community too. but the picture of my community in threenails carrying ME? well now that picture’s a little fuzzy. a lot of that has to do with the fact that giving myself and all i’m holding onto and working through up to a community is knock down, drag out scary. i’m afraid of being a burden (there’s that word again) to people. there is so much fear wrapped up in laying myself down and thinking that people “won’t want me anymore,” that they’ll turn and book it in the other direction. so if i just take care of myself and don’t say i need help, don’t admit to myself that i need help then i’m safe, right? (and yes i’m aware that this fear or bad habit, whatever also affects my personal relationship with God). am i making sense to anyone? does this ring true for anyone?

so when martha asked me, how can threenails as a community carry you, i had no answer. i wasn’t being coy. i really didn’t know what that would look like. (and this is coming from someone that’s been hanging around here for over 3 years with friendships that date back farther than that. no new people jitters here. i don’t know, maybe it’s harder with people you’ve known for a long time, maybe not) so my question to all of you is, is this something you can relate to? what’s your picture of a community carrying? what’s your picture of being carried by a community of people? what does this look like for threenails? where’s our growing edge with this?

this isn’t as put together as i wanted it to be, but i guess that’s the point, isn’t it?