becoming a hostess

As we've been praying through building community here in Atlanta, Jayson and I felt led to take a step of faith and plan a dinner party. Now, I do realize that "planning a dinner party" may not seem like a daunting endeavor requiring great faith to many people, but it was for me, because:

1. I am not a good cook. Or, maybe better said, I am not a cook. Our family of two mostly subsides on eating out, picking up take-out, grabbing a salad or soup from Alon's, or - if we're really getting adventurous - Jayson grills chicken and I put asparagus in a pan and put it in the oven for 10 minutes. Cooking scares me.
2. We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It's not so much big; you have to go through hoops like dialing in at a call box, going through a gate, going up an elevator, etc. to get in; the hallway carpet needs to be replaced; and, perhaps most importantly, we don't have a kitchen table.
3. We don't have a group of friends, so we'd be inviting couples who don't know each other. This is fun to me, but I realize it can be intimidating or just not as fun to other folks.

So those are the reasons I didn't know about having a dinner party. But Shauna Niequist, who wrote Bread & Wine (which, one day, I will stop blogging about, maybe), inspired me to give it a try. Throughout the book, Shauna wrote that genuine hospitality is not about being perfect... having a perfect home, the perfect meal, a perfect life. It's about creating a space for people to come together, to share life, to break bread, to laugh, to feel at home, cared for and safe. So I put my insecurities aside and went for it with Jayson.

We picked a date and invited seven couples, three of which could make it. We asked the Williams to bring wine, the Sparks to bring cheese, the Dolvins to bring a salad, and we got ingredients to make homemade pizzas and a recipe called "Simplest Chocolate Mousse" from none other than Bread & Wine. We cleaned the apartment, set a Frank Sinatra playlist on the iPod, borrowed a few chairs from our neighbors, and prayed for God to provide a fun and homey night.

I can't say that the party was a raving success... mostly because I don't know how that would be judged, and more so, because that wasn't the point. We went into Friday night with open hands, asking God to bless our evening and make our friends feel welcomed in our home but trying to accomplish nothing beyond that. 

What I can say is that Jayson and I had so much fun, and we hope our guests did too. Our friends were beyond gracious - helping with pizzas, getting to know one another with a genuine interest, sitting on the floor to eat, sharing sweet compliments about our little home. We went to bed Friday night worn out but happy and grateful.

I don't know where God will lead us next on our journey toward building community. But I hope Friday night will remind us that our only role is to prayerfully trust God and obey as he leads us. And if that involves pizza, wine, chocolate and friends, well, we'll certainly oblige. :)

p.s. I didn't take too many pictures - in fact, none with people in them - but here is a before and after look at our kitchen preparations:

Before

After

becoming a neighbor

So, back on the question of community, here's what the Teagles are pondering these days.

Here in Atlanta, we are hunting for a house. Or maybe hunting is too strong a word. Exploring the purchase of a home is probably more like it.  Anyhow, we look online, we drive around, we talk, we dream, we look up houses on my Trulia app (which fully feeds my somewhat stalker-ish Internet search tendencies, but hey, it's all in the name of home purchase research).

We are also in the process of a church transition. We've been going to a church - a really, really great church at that - since we first got married, but we feel like God is leading us somewhere new. We've been visiting another really, really great church over the last month and feel excited about it. It's smaller, and it feels like it could lead to some great friendships. We love the teaching and the worship and the mission. We are getting on board with this new church becoming our new church home.

However, point A - the neighborhood where we are exploring buying a house - and point B - the church we are considering attending - are not close to each other. As in 25 miles apart. If you add in where each of us work as points C and D, it looks like we've taken a map of greater Atlanta and dropped four pins as far as possible from one another.

This is bothering me, or maybe more accurately, this is provoking me to ask a lot of questions. I sat tearfully at lunch with Jayson on Sunday and tried to share what I was processing, which is that I want to live and work and go to church all in the same neighborhood. I want our kids to go to school with our neighbors and our best friends to live around the corner and to be plugged in our community. I want to run into people at the grocery store. I want to pop over at someone's house and borrow sugar or olive oil. I want to have a Bible study in my home that people can walk to. I want to be a part of a community that's not just relational, but geographic as well. I want to be a part of a neighborhood.

And we talked and talked. About if this is realistic, or if I have some sort of 1950's idealized version of life in my head. If it's realistic in a sprawling city like Atlanta. And, most importantly, if it's realistic based on the home, church and work opportunities God has laid in front of us right now.

Jayson is always saying that we need to just "take the next right step" in each area of our life, which is so wise. If we feel directed by the Lord to buy a house in A City, God will honor that. If we feel called to plant at B Church, God will make our time there fruitful. If we feel led to work at C and D, he'll orchestrate the details. We just have to be obedient in our next move. But what do we do when our hearts seem to be leading us on so many different directions?

I feel confident that the desires I have for community - a rich, relational, close-knit community - are real and are planted in my heart from the Lord himself. But the more I've thought about it over the last couple days, the more I've decided that the main question I'm wrestling with is this: Did he plant this desire in my heart for our next season of life, did he plant it in my heart for a future season of life, or did he plant it in me to fulfill in heaven alone?  I long to play a role in the kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven, but at the same time, I believe the quote by C.S. Lewis - "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." Already, but not yet.

So that's where we are as a family, navigating where God's leading us in our home and our church and our jobs and our friendships. I know he has a plan, and I know Jayson will lead our family well through these decisions that face us. I feel confused right now, but I know one day I look back on this season and see God's hand orchestrating each and every day. And in the meantime, I'm trying to remember,

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
Ecclesiastes 3:11

becoming a part of a community

I'm reading Shauna Niequist's book Bread and Wine right now. Let me just tell you: I LOVE this book. In fact, I recently told Jayson that I think it's my favorite book I've ever read, and I sincerely mean that.

In one of the chapters, Shauna writes,

"One of the best things about our six years in Grand Rapids was this little band of friends we made, something like a tribe, very much like a family. We laughed and cried and shared lawn care equipment. We visited each other in the hospital when our babies were born. We grilled out and spent weekends at the lake and up north, and we gathered around the table what seems like a million times...

They were our people, our stand-in family, our truth tellers, our problem solvers, our middle of the night phone calls and unannounced stopovers…"

Isn't that beautiful? It is! And it's so exceptionally beautiful because it is a picture of community. Real, authentic, community, shared with friends who are like family.

Since we got married almost a year ago, community has been a piece of our married life that's just... missing. The funny thing is that Jayson and I have lots and lots of dear, precious friends. We have friends from childhood and college and work, single friends and married friends, friends with kids and no kids, friends all over the country. We could line up a double date every night of the week and go probably six months without repeating. Oftentimes, we do just that.

I'm not saying all of that like it's a good thing, something to boast about. Yes, we have a large number of amazing friends. But right now, it feels like we're living in a season of a lot of breadth without a lot of depth. Oh, the depth is there when we actually see the friends. But when you go 6 months without a good catch-up, it's hard to feel like you're living life together in a meaningful way.

The hardest part is that we don't exactly know what to do about it. We've tried joining a small group through our church, but it honestly just hasn't translated into much more than a once-a-week 2-hour Monday night gathering. So we're feeling just... stuck, I guess. Stuck in how to create the community that we so desperately desire. Stuck in a city like Atlanta where traffic accosts you at every turn, the suburban sprawl spans 60 miles end to end, we are renters with no idea where we want to live long term, and we're only mildly confident that our current church is the one where we want to plant. Stuck.

But even though we feel stuck, I still believe with all my heart and soul that God created us as a couple to live in a community of friends like Shauna describes. He desires for us to live among people who speak truth over us, who love us unconditionally, who share in joy and in grieving. I believe he desires us to live our marriage in a tribe, not in isolation.

So we have hope, and we keep believing that the God who placed the desire in our hearts for community will fulfill that desire with the community itself. In all honesty, I have no idea what it will look like or what steps he'll lead us to, but I'm excited to see where he leads us on our journey.

What about you? How have you created community? Any ideas or words of encouragement? I'd love to hear!

p.s. Even as we navigate transforming our individual communities as single people into one meshed community as a married couple, I can't reiterate enough how precious the women are that God has put in my life. I am surrounded by stunning, loyal, wise friends.

For example, my Tuesday night ladies. These women overwhelm me with awesome, real friendship, not just every Tuesday, but every single day.