fight or flight

Last weekend I kicked my beloved family out of our house and hosted five friends for a stay-at-home girls weekend. The idea was to hit all five aspects of healthy living: social, spiritual, physical, emotional and intellectual. So we hiked, talked, prayed, and laughed at a lot of silly things.

Community is integral to being human. Since I lean more towards extroversion (I come away from human interaction feeling invigorated), I may need more contact than some, but we all need connections or we run the danger of becoming sociopathic killers. (I feel as though I heard that somewhere.)

On Monday morning I drove my college friend Jodi to the airport, hugged her goodbye, told her I love her, and as I drove away I noticed I wanted to cry. Now, my emotions were partly due to lack of sleep (we had some late nights), but also, I realized, it was because I would always prefer to be the one to leave as opposed to the left. And in my life, this has almost always been the case.

In true competetive form, Greg and I recently wrote down every place we've lived in our lives. While Greg won for the most homes, I won for the most communities. In my 41 years I've lived in 18 houses, 12 different towns, and 3 different countries. This may be part of the reason I don't feel much empathy for my children having to move 1.5 miles away from "everything they know and love" (our pool). In fact, after eleven years, I've lived in Holland for longer than I've been anywhere else, and it's all I can do not to leave sometimes. Something happens when you put down roots, it becomes more difficult to overlook the problems that are there.

So, how has moving throughout my life changed me? Some might say it's made me into the very compassionate, world-minded, social being I am today. Others (Greg), say it's made me ever-so-slightly controlling and prone to fight or flight knee-jerk reactions. Why does he say this? Other than just being nasty, I think it's because in the past whenever I get frustrated, I've threatened to leave our church, our community, our jobs, our children, and our country (Canada, anyone?). And whenever my kids tell me of someone being mean to them I tell them, "Maybe it's time to take a break." The last time I said this, Greg looked at me, baffled. "Who hurt you?" He may have a point, and I've been mulling this over for a while now, so let's see if I can explain why I'm so crazy.

Just to clarify, no one hurt me. I am able to maintain strong, close friendships and get along swimmingly with my friends. I'm not saying my friends and I see eye-to-eye on everything, but I think we respect and love each other enough to discuss and agree to disagree. So this is not about my people disagreeing with me in any way. But when I reflect on the rest of my community, whether physical or virtual (facebook), it is not hard to find conflicting views. (Like when the carpet installer is visibly baffled that I'd ever want my children learning Spanish as a second language.)

It is hard for me to be in conflict with people (outside of my house), as I run strong in the need for harmony. I also, apparently, run heavy in the judgement trait. Not that I'd call myself super opinionated, but I know what I believe, I know what I feel and think. I have no memory for the "facts" and "statistics," but I have an emotional memory (which sadly does not debate well). I find myself fluctuating between anger and hopelessness, and thinking we're all just processing things the best we can. Honestly, I don't even know that we can change each other's minds as we all have healthy doses of confirmation biases--we watch, read, and usually live with people who support our viewpoints.

I think what I'm learning is that while my number one instinct is to leave a place when things get hard or I disagree with some people there, I can't run from conflict or surround myself with only those who agree with me (or else I'd be surrounded by Greg, my children, and a small handful of friends). And God created the church to make it a reflection of heaven--a big, ugly, messed up reflection that only He can make holy. Do we get it right? Not even close. Do we turn people away from the church in the process? Sadly, yes. (I have several good friends who grew up in the church who no longer go for a variety of reasons.) But sometimes the easiest thing to do is to leave when things get hard. And sometimes the hardest thing to do, is to stay and live in community with those who disagree with us the most. Which actually works out well for me, because the second hardest thing for me to do is to pack up all my crap and move.