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Find Community
THRIVING IS A TEAM SPORT
Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
Jane Howard
By yourself you are unprotected.
With a friend you can face the worst.
Can you round up a third?
A three-stranded rope is not easily snapped.
Ecclesiastes 4:12 MSG
I didn’t want to judge the poor woman. She seemed nice enough. It’s just that she had absolutely no idea I wasn’t who she thought I was. I don’t mean she thought I was someone else entirely. She just had me pegged all wrong.
I’d had an appointment with her on my calendar since the week I was diagnosed, and my chart sat like a ticking bomb on the table between us. All she knew about me was in that chart: Hardy, Nicola. Female. 44 years old. ypT3 pN1 M0 Rectal Adenocarcinoma. All I knew about her was that she was my cancer navigator and her name was Darcy.
Her role, as her title suggested, was to help me navigate my cancer journey, and if I needed anything I could call her and she’d help or find someone who could. I liked Darcy. She was smart, funny, down to earth, and had a love of English TV, which is always a winner. She saw me as a person, not as a cancer statistic or a problem to be solved. We clicked immediately except for her annoying thing about “community.” She gushed endlessly about how helpful it would be to meet complete strangers (who I had nothing in common with except similarly placed tumors) to chat about how messed up and nauseous our lives had become (my words not hers, of course).
I’d told her quite emphatically I was fine—I didn’t want or need to join a group, belong to a support system, or discover the joys of group counseling—but at each appointment she kept at it. Like a high-end personal shopper tasked with finding the perfect outfit, she was relentless in her calm, patient manner. I fought back equally calmly but not quite so patiently.
Week after week the conversation repeated itself in the same rhythmic dance. I admired her perseverance, yet in spite of her encouragement, I actively avoided the cancer community. All that caring, sharing, ribbon-wearing kumbaya stuff filled me with the heebie-jeebies. I’d cope alone, thanks all the same.
The trouble was, that’s all I did: cope. Without a community sailing the same cancer-infested waters as I was, and holding back some of my deepest fears from close friends, I began to feel lonely and unseen, despite everyone cheering me on and helping in a million different ways. I discovered the danger of coping alone is we end up wandering lonely in a crowd.
The Community Conundrum
When life’s easy and we’re happy hamsters, community is fun and hassle-free, but as soon as that changes we shrink back. We yearn for connection with all its richness, yet at our most raw and vulnerable and needing that richness more than ever, we avoid it, protecting ourselves from possible further damage. I call this the “community conundrum.”
Part of Us Craves Community
God is community. He’s not just community minded or a fan of community living. He is community—three persons in one. It’s who he is by his nature and at his core.
We, dear friend, are “marvelously made” (Ps. 139:14 MSG). Not because of our stunning good looks or witty personalities but because God knitted us together in his image (Gen. 1:27) and didn’t make a mistake. Since we reflect his likeness, we too, at our core, are made for community. Every single one of us. Even me, the Cope-Alone Ranger.
Community is God’s plan for his people. It always has been and always will be, and we can see the life-giving thread of community permanently woven through the pages of the Bible. Our ache for connection comes from our heavenly Father in the same way my Roman nose comes from my earthly father (sorry, Dad!), and in satisfying this craving we ultimately find more life. It’s a genius move if we don’t dig in our heels and reject it all, because the act of connecting human to human in this disconnected world does more than connect us to a person. It connects us to the person of God.1
Ask a Norwegian why they are so happy and they reply with a “we” as opposed to an “I” statement.2 That’s because, as research shows us, a full life doesn’t need to be pain-free but does need to be lived in community. The annual World Happiness Report even uses a country’s level of social support as one of its seven measures of how happy its residents can be. When a sense of community is strong, health and wealth take on less importance.
Interacting person to person bolsters our immune system, sends feel-good hormones surging through our bloodstream to our brains, and helps us live longer.3 Sharing about our pain (physical or emotional) even reduces the number of pain receptors that are stimulated, so our pain level actually goes down.4 As we gather in groups with similar experiences we create a shared sense of identity and a brighter future.5 In other words, hope. As author Kristen Strong says, “My ability to accept and thrive through change is directly proportional to the state of my near and dear friendships.”6 The benefits of community are almost endless.
God, who is community, made us for community. We have a community-shaped hole within us and yearn for it to be filled, and by bravely allowing others in we free ourselves to experience more of his full life.
And Yet Part of Us Avoids Community
I’m an extrovert who’s never met a silence she can’t fill, a people person who at the end of a long day will say, “I’m pooped, let’s go to that party.” Before I was sick my focus was often outward—arms wide open to exploring new connections and deepening old ones. I wasn’t a community-loving, knit-your-own-granola, commune-living hippie type, but I valued and loved the people around me and found it easy. My community-shaped hole was full and life was good, but having cancer shut down that part of me. I closed ranks, too tired and vulnerable to let anyone in.
If we’re made for community and it’s an important ingredient for living fully (whether life’s a bed of roses or a pile of manure), why do we avoid it like pubescent boys avoid personal hygiene whenever a manure pile lands on our doorstep? In a nutshell, because when we need it most, community feels too hard and too high risk.
Even if you’re not quite so community phobic as I was, you may feel similar pangs of nervousness at the thought of diving into community right now.
Here are my top seven reasons for avoiding community when I first got cancer.
I was scared. What if they didn’t like me? What if they expected intimacy and vulnerability? I don’t do emotions. They are raw, scary things I can’t control.
I was arrogant. I assumed these folks couldn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know or that I couldn’t ask Google, a doctor, or Darcy.
I didn’t want to get hurt again. I’d lost Mum and Jo and didn’t want to risk getting close to a bunch of cancer patients who were more likely to pop their clogs than your average Joe.
I was in denial. I didn’t want to admit I was “one of them”—a cancer patient.
I was wary. I’d been burned and rejected by being vulnerable in community in the past. I wanted to protect myself.
I was proud. I believed the lie that support groups are for the weak and feeble—people who can’t cope alone. I was strong, I had this, and I didn’t need others.
I was selfish. I had limited time and energy and needed to spend it on me, my family, and getting well. I couldn’t be weighed down by other people’s problems.
Ouch, right?
Please don’t beat yourself up if you see yourself in here. It’s understandable given what you’re going through. Of course you want to protect yourself; the world hasn’t protected you. Of course you’re scared; you’ve been ripped apart and left raw and vulnerable. Of course you don’t want to get hurt again. I get it.
When life is at its toughest, community seems like a high-risk investment.
In a world that values the “self-made person,” the “make-it-happen captain,” and a “positive mental attitude,” it’s unsurprising we hide when we’re none of these. But steering away from community in an act of self-preservation drives away the love, support, and connection God offers. I began to realize I needed community, and by stubbornly standing alone on the outside looking in I was rejecting all it offered me.
Created with a community-shaped hole within us, we need and crave community. And yet when life is hardest and we need it most, we shy away. Here, at the end of ourselves, community—in all its wonderful, life-giving messiness—is often more than we can cope with. So we go it alone, only to crave connection more as this hole grows deeper.
There you have it, the community conundrum in all its full-life-limiting glory. We desire community and avoid it, love it and hate it, need it desperately and fearfully shun it. Together we must solve this conundrum, break the cycle, and be set free from these paralyzed places.
Learn to Dance in Community
Like a hedgehog poked with a stick, I had rolled into a ball of prickles. I was safe but alone. As I began to uncurl and realize safe isn’t always where the life is, I began to first step into the community already around me and then out toward a new community I went in search of. I like to think I danced my way there: step in, step out, step in, step out. As we step to the beat of our hearts yearning for connection, we discover community isn’t so high risk after all.
As I unfurled, I saw others waiting for me. All I had to do was stop turning away and step in toward them. It wasn’t a physical step but an emotional one—a step of the heart, which for me was far more difficult.
The women who traveled with Jesus knew how to step in with their hearts, not just their feet. They were people just like us—hurting, healing, looking for more than their current lives and tangible pain offered. There was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, Mary the mother of James, Salome, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, along with others whose names and stories we’ll never hear.7 They had found all they ached for in Jesus so they followed him, not wanting the source of their newfound life to move on without them.
These women weren’t just hangers-on, mere Jesus groupies eager for the next Instagram-worthy miracle. This was an intimate group of capable women, some of whom had defied social expectations to marry and bear children in order to follow, serve, and provide for this itinerant rabbi’s ministry. Each one had her own story—a story that found fullness in Jesus.
As they prepared meals together, traveled the dusty roads side by side, and discussed Jesus’s teachings, I imagine them sharing their stories: where they’d come from, what they’d endured, and how they ached for more. Each conversation a step deeper into connection and community. As night fell I’m sure they smiled and laughed like any group of like-minded women sharing life and wine together.
They were family, a tribe, a clan. They set out to follow Jesus and stepped into community along the way. Coming together was unplanned; staying together was deliberate.
These women may have found themselves together by chance, but as they shared life and eventually Jesus’s death and resurrection, they chose to step in toward each other with intention, going beyond the mundane and superficial. That’s the scary step of the heart I’m talking about. To step in we must unfurl our protected hedgehog bodies and dare to show each other our unprotected emotions.
Our unintentional communities are the connections and friendships that grow organically around the school gates, at the gym, and around the coffee machine at work. They are the people we sit beside at church each week, our neighbors, and our friends and family, the people life has connected us to. This community may be unintentional, but to gather its riches we must step into it with intention.
Now don’t get me wrong and start panicking. I’m not asking you to shock the postman with the intimate details of your colonoscopy or tell the barista at Starbucks about the darkest moments of your IVF treatment. I’m simply suggesting we step out of the shadows and let ourselves—our real selves—be seen.
My girlfriends rallied with the speed of an emergency crash team when I told them I had cancer, and the more honest and open I became the greater the jolt of life I received.
Eventually I had to tell people outside our immediate friends and family that I had cancer—and not just any cancer but rectal cancer. The trouble was, I didn’t look sick. During treatment I never lost my hair, and my chemo comfort foods were bagels and buns, so I wasn’t your stereotypical pale, bald, underweight cancer patient. I’d also just run a marathon, so when I told people they were utterly shocked. I remember telling the mum of one of our kid’s friends. I didn’t want to tell her—all my pride, arrogance, and fear of vulnerability clouded the waters. But as I stepped down the garden path to where she waited to whisk the kids off to practice, I braced myself and gave her the news. She was shocked, yes, but more than that, as the wall I’d built around me cracked, she really saw me, maybe for the first time. Her mama heart broke for mine, and from then on, whenever she drove the kids, we didn’t skirt around superficial mum talk but marched right through the door I’d just opened to each other’s lives.
A few weeks later I nervously stepped in again and accepted our prayer team’s offer to pray for healing. It’s one thing to admit you’re not a perfect pastor’s wife, but it’s another thing entirely to accept the laying on of hands for a tumor lodged in your backside. Yet this generous and intimate shared act of faith is still producing the fruit of community in all our lives today.
Stepping in required me to let go of who I thought I should be and how I wanted others to see me, and to be who I really am, which Brené Brown assures us is essential for connection.8 Stepping deeper into the connections already around me may have been uncomfortable, but it took them to a fresher, deeper, more fulfilling place.
As those women looked up at Jesus, beaten and flogged, breathing his last on the cross, their world shattered. They had found life in this man and now he was dying. Despite the suffocating weight of grief and confusion, none of them turned away to cope alone. Instead, they stepped further in, wrapping their arms around each other, holding one another up. Three days later they went to the tomb and found it empty, and finding Jesus alive they celebrated together.
Stepping into community in our pain provides a ready-made party when it’s time to celebrate.
Step Out and Find Your “I Get It” Tribe
Maggie had her first seizure just after her first birthday. Her mum, Erin, was about to take little Maggie and her older brother, Anderson, outside to play when Maggie fell to the floor, limp, and shook violently before she stopped breathing and started turning blue. Erin, pregnant with her third child, had no idea her daughter was having her first epileptic seizure.
As the paramedics raced to their quiet cul-de-sac, Erin placed her mouth over her daughter’s and started rescue breathing. She had never seen a seizure before, but as more seizures followed in the weeks ahead she became all too familiar with the fear and helplessness that surrounds them.
When Maggie’s little sister, Ellie, was born, it took just eighteen months before she too had a seizure. Having three kids under five is tough enough for any mum, but two of Erin’s three kids were epileptic toddlers. The mum life she’d dreamed of vanished and was replaced by a new normal filled with uncertainty, helplessness, and guilt. She was drowning in questions and feeling hopeless.
Despite having friends and family who loved her well, folded laundry, and babysat so she could nap, Erin still felt isolated. No one she knew had kids with epilepsy, let alone two toddlers eighteen months apart. She needed others to say, “Me too . . . I get it.” Craving mums who could empathize not just sympathize, she bravely stepped out to find them.
In online support groups and on websites about epilepsy she found the emotional, practical, and spiritual help and connection she so desperately needed. She found other mums who understood, wanted to journey with her, and affirmed that her current reality was worthy of mourning. She was given helpful, practical advice, such as to always be prepared for the unexpected by packing a bag of seizure supplies, and was then encouraged to go and live her life and not be trapped at home by the fear of a seizure happening in public. This community became such a place of hope and peace that when Maggie had a seizure after being seizure-free for five years, it was this community that Erin turned to. These were the friends who could help her mourn, understand when she screamed, “I thought it was over!” and allow her to feel her pain in a safe space.
Erin had found true friends. With her world in tatters, she’d gone hunting for help and understanding and found friendship and community. She intentionally stepped out to look for what she didn’t have.
I hope you’ve got a tremendous gaggle of friends and family who are loving you, holding you, making you tea, and wiping your tears, but if they don’t truly understand what you’re going through, please step out and find your people. It doesn’t negate your family’s role or mean your friends aren’t good enough; it just means you have needs they can’t meet. And that’s okay. Al didn’t know what it felt like when my ostomy bag leaked in Target, and it wasn’t fair for me to expect him to. We all need people who can say, “I get it. I understand.”
By stepping into “I get it” spaces, we break the community conundrum and find connection with people who’ve been where we are, allowing them into our darkest places.
Finding More Than Community in Community
Made in the image of the God who is community, we will always long for the connection and fullness it brings; but when life is painful and finding community seems the hardest, we only taste a fraction of it if we turn away in self-protection.
We can find the abundant life God promised us amongst today’s tears, but not as a Cope-Alone Ranger. Darcy was right after all—thriving is a team sport.
I am a Thriver.
I believe life doesn’t have to be pain-free to be full.
I reject the lies of the world about who and whose I am.
I embrace the truth that I am loved, seen, and enough, and that God loves me, isn’t mad, and will never leave.
I’ve got this because God’s got me, and together we can do more than I could ever do alone.
I choose brave, knowing it doesn’t need to be big, just intentional.
I trust God, even when I don’t want to and can’t sense his presence, because I’ve checked his credentials and can let go of everything I’ve been clinging to.
I lean into community because thriving is a team sport and no one wins alone.