When Your Dream Is Community

Ten of us.

Ten women filled my house this weekend.

My darling hubby took the kids to the farm and let our house become Ground Zero for the God-sized Dreamers first annual planning meeting.  From Friday at 11 am to Sunday at 4 pm my house was filled to overflowing.  Overflowing with laughter.  Overflowing with love.  Overflowing with community.

I had been so stressed about whether my house would be big enough or clean enough or organized enough, that I almost missed this.

The community.

That sense of being back in a college dorm only with women that God hand-selected to bring encouragement and joy and understanding and compassion.  As if each of us was there to fill a specific need in the others.

It’s a long story of how we all ended up holed up in my house even though these dreamers came from everywhere from Arizona to New Jersey, but God scripted it out well in advance of us ever comprehending how we would need one another.  How we would pray for one another.  How we would dig down to find each other’s crazy laugh – you know the one you used to have as a kid where you snorted and peed in your pants just a little.  How we would reveal past wounds from which we still bore the scars and would speak healing over each other’s pain.

They were God with skin on.

I watched a woman who had suffered at the hands of legalism and corruption of faith speak healing and freedom over the life of another.  I watched a woman who hasn’t borne children charge the gates of Heaven on behalf of one of my children with such power that I had no words.  I watched a woman whose marriage has been pulled back from the brink of utter destruction share hope to another struggling wife.

There were so many individual and community moments that I almost forgot the actual work that we did.  And even in that, the hours of work to further the vision that God has laid on our hearts for fellow dreamers, we worked to build a bigger and stronger community so that each woman we encountered who had a dream would be encouraged to keep dreaming.

This weekend came in a chaotic season for so many of us.  Which is probably why God brought us into a space with little schedule or make up or expectations.  So that the outcome was community.  Building our community to grow another community.

I am eternally grateful for these ten gifts.

I hold several God-sized dreams in my heart.  But without a doubt, one of my clearest dreams now is community. 

Creating, having, and building community.