too many thoughts to handle

hello friends, it's kimberly. you know how I'm like off in the middle of nowhere with the goal of getting experience living in community and also because I am really interested in it as something that will probably be very important in my life? yeah, well I've had lots of extra time to think about things and it seems that right now I need to go a slightly different direction. I like you. I like you all. a lot. but I just can't live with you right now. I'm gonna be living with a friend in college station, not in an ideal location or price or anything and actually I'm stressing about the financial stuff quite a lot, but socially I will have some space and that will be good for the phase of life that I'm in right now, which is a crazy and overwhelming one. I need a lot of quiet time and not chaos and even though living in bryan with you would probably be the good kind of chaos... I just need some time of rest. this summer was supposed to be my time of relaxation and escape from the real world and preparation for living with you, and it has definitely been an escape from the world, but relaxing/preparation - uhhh not so much. so I don't feel like my body or mind or spirit are ready for a whole lot of activity quite yet. oh and if you didn't get the memo I (temporarily?) dropped out of school and like a lot of really unfortunate things happened that I am still dealing with. so yeah things are uh not quite in order right now.

I'll be home in a couple of weeks and I can come over to the house and we can talk about things more and stuff. because I don't want to stop hanging out with you and working on things together and having good convos and good relationships and stuff. will you still be my friend?

(this probably isn't news to any of you but I had never officially told anyone. so there it is, officially)

even though my opinion doesn't really matter at all anymore, about the mission statements... I like both dan's and janet's, specifically that janet talks about intentionality and that we need to bring hope/healing to ourselves as well as to the community. just moving into "community" doesn't mean that suddenly things are perfect and people are loving and healing can happen. it doesn't even mean that suddenly we are living the way Christ wants us to. outward love is important, obviously. inviting people to experience the church that we are hopefully living out. but first - what are we inviting them into? are we being loving within our own ranks? what example are we setting in how we relate to each other?

and also, sometimes I think about how it would affect the community if you all lived there and did great things and then suddenly the sims street house ceased to exist. I mean, I'm not really contributing to that at all right now and nothing would ever get started if everyone was concerned about this, but is it healthy for people to form bonds with us if we're not stable enough to tell them that we'll be here when they need us later on down the road? I watched a documentary a while ago about the Big Brothers Big Sisters program and the kids (the "Littles") suddenly have this older, more responsible mentor figure in their lives and the mentors work on getting the kids to break down walls and open up and feel secure and know that they have someone to talk to, a friend! - and then a lot of the mentors, who just happen to often be people roughly our ages, go move on with their lives and the kids feel abandoned all over again. the kid the documentary was about was especially negatively affected by it because he thought he finally had someone to trust. but he was wrong. I'm afraid to commit to a big project like this when I very well may be the one to move on soon and leave the people I become close to in the dust. I got to meet a lot of folks this summer who have been living in community for a while, and one friend from camden house in new jersey was telling me about how both they and simple way had/have this really high turnover rate of people living in the house and how it was really more harmful than helpful to have people coming to live there who couldn't commit to very long of a time. people from the neighborhood would come back to the house asking for someone they had made a special connection with, only to find out that person had moved on to the next exciting thing in their life. and the inner workings of their houses certainly didn't benefit from having friends constantly moving in and out. I'm probably that person, the one who is moving around looking for the next exciting thing to commit my life to. are you? is it okay that we're so young and unstable and think that we can help people? I mean yeah right now we can give them some food and money and a listening ear. but what about in the long term? will it be more harm than good? or maybe people are willing to commit for a while after all?

but back to the intentionality thing: can I urge you to be really purposeful in your interactions with each other? like meet regularly, intentionally, as a house and ask how people are feeling and what are they thinking about things and don't just think that closeness and hope/healing is going to happen on its own, overnight. because it won't. people are still people, terribly flawed and hurting people, even if they're living in magical new monastic intentional christian communities. ask each other tough, challenging questions that might have ugly answers. pry. and then love each other anyway

don't take me too seriously. I'm not trying to be critical of you because I actually think it's really great how things are working out; I'm just writing down things I have been thinking about this summer.

okay enough for now. see you soon. I love you