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People, part 2

Sophie - April 15, 2009

One of the things that Beth had us do at Living Proof New Orleans was to go back to our hotel rooms Friday night and draw a visual representation of what community looks like in each one of our lives.

I KNOW, Y'ALL. SHE GAVE US HOMEWORK.

So here's what we had to do.

1) Draw a star in the center of a piece of paper. That star represents you.

2) Each point on the star represents someone who has deeply shaped / impacted your spiritual life - whether that's in a negative or a positive way. Write a name on each point. You may feel like you need more than five, or you may not have five. I grouped my parents together, and I grouped some pastors together. Just play along as best you can.

3) Draw a circle made up of dashes around the star. These dashes represent your close community of faith (you do life with these people; they get in your business and you get in theirs).

4) Draw a circle made up of a zig-zag line around the circle made of dashes. The zig-zag circle represents the entire family of God.

5) Draw a final circle around the whole thing. The final circle represents the people outside of the body of Christ.

Here's what mine looked like. You won't be able to read everything because I had to shrink it, but you'll get the general idea.

Beth drew a big arrow that represents the fluid nature of relationships in our lives - sometimes people from the zig-zag line will move into the dash line; sometimes people on the dash line will move out to the zig-zag; sometimes people from the big ole circle will move to the dash. Relationships change as we move through different seasons of life.

So obviously those people listed on that dash line help protect us from isolation, and that is huge. But here's what occurred to me tonight as I looked back over my illustration: those people also become my FILTER. The stuff that comes into my life AND the stuff that pours out of my life has to pass through those people. In that sense they are my protection - they keep an eye on what's going on with me. They hold me accountable.

Here's the other thing that dawned on me: if you look at my list of the five people who have most impacted me spiritually, only one of those people is anywhere near the internet. If you look at my close community, only two of those people are directly connected to my blogging world.

I think I'm a pretty plugged in person, so I need to remember that as much as I love and enjoy the interweb, my most genuine community is happening offline. Now certainly some of those offline relationships are the result of connections I've made through blogging, but the friendships have had to move beyond the computer screen. Real life is where those "in your business" relationships are taking place, and I need to make sure I'm investing my time and my energy accordingly. Because in order to be effective out there in the zig-zag and the big ole circle, I've got to protect those relationships on the dash.

So. That was long.

Y'all have any thoughts?

Anybody grabbing pen and paper so you can make a chart of your own?

Category: Events