Not Dead Yet...

"You guys are still at R Street? I heard things were really weird..."

"I heard you guys were shutting down"

It's funny, the things people will say... Sometimes others' version of your story is so convincing you begin to worry that their version is the correct one... and that you are simply delusional. I am really glad that the R Street story is not my story but that it is our story. Glad that I need not trust my version of the story because we are telling the story together.

And I am thankful.

Thankful that we are still here.  With loss of place and loss of some who began the story with us... we are still here.  When logic seemed to indicate a splintering and scattering... the wagons were circled instead.  When it seemed that the last of the day's sunlight was calling us away from the playground and home to wash up for dinner; instead, we locked arms and started a new game of red rover.

I am thankful for the family i have chosen... for the family that has chosen each other. I am humbled by the fierce determination to remain a family when it would be easier, and maybe even more prudent, to scatter and join other families.  I am thankful for a community who needs and loves one another because of the life we have already lived together and for the commitment to live through the story to come... together.

And so we change... Faces change. Places change. But WE remain. And we are strong; not because we are made up of strong individuals but because we are a family who knows our individual weakness and has found that we are only strong when we are connected.  Everything changes... everything but the things that still define us...

community... mission... inclusion... worship...

And contrary to what you may have heard...  We are not dead yet.