The Power of Community & Love

When I began to really wrestle with knowing God in college, I drank in information through a fire hose. I had previously been exposed to various aspects of the Bible, Jesus and God, but I still knew almost nothing. I began my nonstop investigating, reading, asking questions and trying to understand the God who seemed to be calling me to Himself (though I put up a fight). I read devotionals, picked up the Bible and started journaling through each chapter that I was reading and discerning what it said.⁣

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The hardest part of my fledgling faith at the time was prayer and relationship with the Lord (and it might still be that). Since talking to people about my current experiences (see this blog) is so difficult for me to do, talking to God about it is very similar, especially since there is some complicated theology thrown in about God's omniscience making it hard to understand relationship with Him. Talking to God about anything was difficult. He was easier to write about, to talk about rather than talk to or engage with directly. Talking to God also evoked in me somewhat of a fear of rejection, not hearing anything or finding out He isn't real, and thus finding myself a fool.

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It’s not really a surprise that the relational aspect of knowing God was difficult for me when simple, honest and deep friendships also posed a challenge. It’s not like I would suddenly sprout great relational skills only with God and not with people. Therefore, once I gave myself to a relationship with a friend in the college ministry I attended, my relationship with God also continued to catch fire. There was some key in letting myself be completely open with and known by another person that allowed me to understand a bit of how relationship with God must work as well. My friend who accepted me in my confessions, prayed with and for me, invited me and challenged me gave me a human example that I could then use to grow my relationship with God.⁣

Not only did this friend help me set a base of experience to which I could have a prayer life with the Lord, but having this friend and ultimately a community helped me experience what the love of God might feel like. It's easy to be taught in the Bible that God is love, that He loves us, that He sacrificed for us. However, this is mere knowledge unless it's converted to a felt experience. I believe the community that came around me, that loved and supported me in the midst of my stumbles and mistakes began to help me experience an iota of the love that must be emanating from God the Father. Community love set an example for my heart to know that it must be loved by God. It helps convert theological identity into a felt experience that pulls me further into wanting to grow with the Lord relationally.

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It’s not a surprise then that community, taking care of one another and loving one another is so often mentioned in the Bible because we can be taught through others how to love God and how to be loved by God. Knowledge is one thing, experience is another. We now live in the age of the Holy Spirit working through the lives and hearts of the people that know and love God.⁣

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In John 13:14-15 Jesus commands us to love one another.⁣

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”⁣

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Community and being known dramatically transformed how I am able to deal with anxiety, but it also has dramatically altered the way that I experience God, Himself. Therefore friends, what are you waiting for? There is so much power in love. What does it look like to do what Jesus said, and love one another, right now? Today? This month? This year?

Anxiety & Being Known

The realization that I am in internal processor was a really big deal in my journey with mental health.⁣

I have always been an observer, introspective and highly internal. Thus, my natural method of dealing with overwhelming feelings and fear is to do it inwardly and to do it alone. Part of the reason that I believe I became this way is because I’m such an intense experiencer of emotions and they can hit me so hard sometimes that I can’t even immediately put words to the experience… therefore I’m processing my emotions on my own because who is going to ask how you felt about something that happened 3 days after it happened?

This mostly worked for me until I started struggling with mental health. I always felt alone, though I was never alone and I couldn’t figure out why. Always this constant feeling like others never really cared about me, though I was certainly not a loner running with wolves: I had a family, I had (some) friends, I was not alone. I had taught myself through my own thought habits that people don’t really want to hear about my inner life.⁣ Somehow I also believed that it's rude of me to just offer up such information without being asked.

It wasn’t until later in life (and still now as I’m reading The Body Keeps the Score) that I continue connecting the dots that to be known deeply in a relational way is a game changer when it comes to mental health. I’m not saying that it is a cure-all for all who struggle with mental health, but I do believe that to be truly known in a safe relationship is an important tool for battling anxiety and depression for me.⁣

There are a lot of caveats to this safe relationship. The relationship with the listener must be one where the other is attuned to my feelings, stories and emotions and can demonstrate and reflect their connection to me. The person also must be curious about my story, asking additional questions, clarifying points, and also validating (even if they disagree) the experience that my brain is having. They can still disagree with me, I am okay with that (thanks COVID) and I can still feel loved, known and understood.

The concept of "Being Known" came to me through the voracious reading of interpersonal neurobiology books by Curt Thompson and James Wilder. Never before would I have guessed that my obsession with "authenticity" from college had a scientific reasoning behind why I suddenly shed a lot of my social anxiety and grew interpersonally. The experience of having safe people who truly know the good, the bad and the ugly about my subjective experience is important to me and has been transformational in my ability to handle my own anxiety struggles.⁣

I am imperfect in freely sharing still to this day. I can share repetitive struggles and stories like this one, but to actively share my lived experience with another still poses challenges for me especially as a busy mom. The fact that I am an internal processor has not changed.

Being a mom permanently means for me that there is always something more important for me to do than to tend to my emotions. Someone needs water, someone needs food, someone needs to be wiped or the dishes need to be done. Theres a pile of laundry, the sinks are gross, and now we have an AirBnb bookings to attend to. Not to mention the business that I run or the students that I meet with. Do I really have time to journal or to leave a friend a voice message about the daily struggles and pains of my current life? Do I have time to even interpret my feelings to make sense of them to even be able to share with another human being? Will they even care that I think I have a chronic disease for the 10th time?⁣

"Pain demands to be felt" - a quote from the Fault in Our Stars that has stuck with me over the years. The Body Keeps the Score has resurfaced this quote back into my mind. Emotions will show up in one way or another if they are not welcomed when they first knock.⁣

I'm not sure that I want to pay the mental health price of not attending to my current struggles and realities anymore.⁣

“Remember that emotion is not a debatable phenomenon. It is an authentic reflection of our subjective experience, one that is best served by attending to it.” - Curt Thompson, MD.