It has been about a month since I officially started my new job in North Carolina. I have a lot to reflect on and I want to start with my beautiful Lifegroup. What is a Lifegroup, anyways, you may ask? It is all about semantics, I suppose, and this is not the important part. Lifegroup could also be called community, home church, cell group, or, recently, I have even heard gel group. This is the important thing - it is all about living life together. The people in my lifegroup, they are my friends, and more than that - as we call it in family finding - they are on my family team, my lifetime network of support and connection. So, I would like to tell you the story of my lifegroup and how I am forever changed by living life with them. My reflection has to come in two parts, because you know by now, I am quite long-winded, as some of you would call it, I would just say that I am detail-oriented.
Winter 2009. I was just starting to get more involved at my church by leading a small group bible study and this is when lifegroup kicked off. Our first outing? Ice skating in Brandon. Just a few of us at this time - 2 guys and 3 girls. We met at my apartment and endured my former roommates evil cat. We studied the book of Luke and followed the story of Jesus. It was simple. There were no fireworks or crazy spirit-filled fall outs, but it was us. We went canoeing one time and finally Shawn asked Annie out on a date (we suspected they would date eventually). We BBQ'd with a tennis racket at Carol's new place, and learned together how to use charcoal. We made pizzas in my super small kitchen. Annie put extra pineapples on hers. We celebrated Carol getting baptized and laughed at her Angel Network cable channels. We celebrated Shawn coming home from internship with a bat-shaped chocolate cake and racoon pinata. We made more pizzas. We had several people that came in and out of lifegroup but always had a core group. We watched Veggie Tales to put a spin on bible stories. We did arts and crafts. We prayed for each other. We were sad when Mark left for Israel and wondered what guys would come along to be with Shawn. We walked with the Israelites through their delivery in Exodus and their struggles in the desert.
Spring 2010. Phil and I became co-leaders, for about 3 seconds. We celebrated him moving to Indonesia to help do some cool stuff there, always with a homemade cake, of course. Everyone helped me move into my new place. We met lots of new people during this time - Bryan, Kylie, Ricky, Becky, Rob, Katie, and Nolan. We celebrated each other's birthdays, hung out on the weekends, had cookouts, took pictures underwater and even became facebook friends. We went to Carol's play together and enjoyed a Rays game - Katie drove a minivan full of us! Some of girls took a trip to NYC and wore neon shirts so we could get on the Today Show. Shawn, Nolan, Bryan and Ricky all became roommates and rented a house together, so we re-located our weekly meeting there. We met some more people - Amber, Joe, Meredith, another Rob, and Mac. We took lots of pictures. Correction: I took a lot of pictures. We had theological debates and disagreed. We prayed and cried.
Sometime in 2011. Although we met weekly for bible study, the men starting meeting an additional day on their own. Katie and Justin start dating. We mourned the loss of Bryan's father alongside him. I experienced my first real break-up and I am pretty sure I couldn't have made it without losing it completely, without my lifegroup. We went jumping at AirHeads and lasted about 5 minutes - except Shawn of course. Katie and I missed our callings as cheerleaders, obviously. We had more cookouts - way more advanced and with real BBQ utensils and became experts on charcoal. We met Marie. After one of our cookouts, we decided to go see a movie together, and afterward we drove all the way to Cocoa Beach, slept on the beach - all the watch the sunrise. Shawn put together a crazy awesome scavenger hunt to propose to Annie and we were all there to witness that. We said goodbye to Shawn and Annie as they moved to Raleigh to start new jobs. We met Jessica. I introduced the Wobble to everyone at Carol's baby shower. Carol did the wobble the best, even 8 months pregnant. We started women's group, to copy the men, of course. And then this beautiful thing happened - Carol gave birth to Samantha and we all became aunts and uncles and you couldn't have told us we weren't related. We stayed in the hospital with the new mom and baby and made sure the nurses were nice. We threw Becky a bachelorette party - even though she forgot about it the day of. We met Hemi and Justin. Kylie moved into my apartment complex and Carol, then Becky lived with her. It was so nice to have them close by. Not like I ever needed to borrow an egg or a cup of sugar. We facebook stalked and questioned new potential boyfriends or girlfriends and made sure one another stayed out of trouble. We deterred stalkers from bothering one another. Katie, Kylie, and I all graduated in December!
2012 so far...Kylie moved across the bridge, which was relatively traumatic and we moved Lifegroup back to my place. We celebrated Rob and Becky's wedding - after they got married while being overseas.James and Carol got married and so Carol moved to TN. Justin and Katie got engaged. Ricky and Kylie got engaged - finally!! - we were invited to celebrate with them on this day. We, of course, knew that this was going to happen, but boy was Kylie getting tired of waiting!! I was in Shawn and Annie's wedding in March, and that was such an honor to be able to witness their life together and celebrate their new journey in marriage. We all danced together at the wedding - wobble, cupid shuffle, electric slide, etc. Mac took some rocking pictures of their wedding. Carol, James, and Samantha came down to Florida for this and she had grown up so much by then. Kylie and Ricky decided to get married June 4, so there was lots of wedding planning, bridal shower party, and a bachelorette and bachelor party weekends we participated in. We kind of all came as a group - after all, it's not just a bible study, we are friends. The girls made "Team Eric" shirts for me - that is an entirely other story for another blog post. We got schooled on how to say "Louisville" from a really KY native. We met Nikeya. Mac miraculously came out free and clear from a bad car accident. We helped Meredith, Kylie, and Bryan move - all in the same weekend, with the same U-Haul. My apartment became wedding central - full of centerpieces and decorations that needed gluing and cutting and candy that needed to be separated by color. Kylie and Ricky got married, Bryan, Nolan, and I stood next to them on the stage but the rest of us were front and center witnessing this great moment. We led the room in the dances again - they clearly were not ready for the wobble. We kept the wedding planner away from Kylie - because that would have had devastating results. We snuck into Kylie and Ricky's apartment while they were on their honeymoon and painted their wall, and they loved it! I knew I was about to take a job out of state, so I scheduled some group pictures of all of us, after all - I have always taken loads of pictures, even professional, of special groups of people in my life. And these were perhaps the most special group of people in my life.
My Lifegroup. My peeps. We have been through pretty much everything together at one time or another. Break-ups. Divorce. Dating. Falling in love. Depression. Bad relationships. Stalkers. Fights. Disagreements. Betrayal and forgiveness, reconciliation. Partying v. sobriety. Family drama. Moving. Losing jobs. Getting jobs. Cooking for each other. Tears. Prayers. Laughter. Lots of laughter. Birth. Walking with Jesus. Weddings. Engagements. Moving away. New friends. Death of a parent. Sharing. Loving. Dancing. Struggling with tough stuff. Supporting. Being honest. Went on adventures. Vented to each other. Stayed up late talking about God and the world around us. Birthday cakes. Meeting each other's family. Facebook stalked and kept each other accountable. Celebrated new things in each other's lives. We are diverse and different. We think different. We like different music and movies, some of us like to be outside, the others prefer indoor activities. We have different political stances and opinions. But, these are the best things about us. And this is what I love the most about us. We don't fit in any box. We don't even go to the same church. We are from all over and have yet, for this time, found each other, and what I believe, will always be connected to one another, and wouldn't have it any other way.
To be continued....
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