On Living In a Small Town

I just heard the helicopter fly overhead. That only means one thing. We live one street over from the hospital, and someone is being life-flighted to a bigger hospital in a nearby city. That's the only reason helicopters fly into this small town. I feel almost a responsibility to engage with the suffering that someone is experiencing right now. So I pray, "God, help them."

It's interesting -- living in a small town -- where you can't go much of anywhere without seeing someone you know. One of the things I have liked least about this place is the way people seem so preoccupied with everyone else's business. It drove me crazy at first. Now, I fear, I've started to fit in a little too much.

But, as much as I despise this small town lifestyle of gossip, and the culture that it encourages --- a culture where you always have to be on your toes; a culture where you know someone is always looking and listening and waiting for you to fall; a culture where we are so obsessed with other people's lives that we won't be honest about our own --- I'm also thankful.

I'm thankful to be known, at least, in part. I'm thankful to know other people. I'm thankful that when I walk in Walmart, I see the same people working the registers, and I see a handful of people I know from various places, shopping, and we stop and we speak to each other in the aisles. We don't have the luxury of shopping in a big city where you could choose from 3 different Walmarts, purposefully choosing the one farthest from home so you can avoid seeing someone you know! And I think that's a good thing.

In the past couple weeks (really, I can think of so many things in the past year), some really devastating things have happened here. And I have seen a whole community struggling and grieving and processing life. That doesn't happen in a big city. A tragedy in a big city is just one more to add to the list of the hundreds of tragedies that are happening all over the city every day. But here --- we're too connected. I mean, really, most of the town is related to each other in some way. So nothing happens without creating this huge ripple. And I'm glad. I'm glad we live in a place where you can't just pretend that life isn't hard! It is hard. And if you won't be honest about it, there's at least a dozen people waiting in line to be "honest" about it for you. And maybe that's good. Maybe, if we aren't willing to be real about the struggle, God just exposes it anyway.

I'm wondering...what if we started being real about our own lives? What if, instead of letting everyone else talk about our struggles for us, we opened up and shared how hard life is right now. What if we embraced this small-town life and followed the commands of Paul in Romans 12 to "rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep"? I believe God has given us, in some ways, a unique opportunity to have real, vibrant, God-honoring community. What if we thanked Him for that, and started using what's He's given us? I wonder what God could do with that. Probably, exceedingly abundantly beyond all we can ask or imagine...