Five Minute Friday: Community

Today I am linking up with The Gypsy Mama for Five Minute Friday for the first time as I prepare to participate in the (in)RL Webcast this weekend. The focus of the webcast is “community”, and it’s also today’s prompt. The task?  Write for five minutes…no editing, no over thinking, no worries. 

Here goes nothing…

Remember those social studies lessons in elementary school about “community”? We would talk about the different parts of the community…the fire station, police, businesses, churches, everything that comes together to help each other. I was a huge fan of the Laura Ingalls books when I was a kid, so I would always imagine Walnut Grove, the one dusty street where you could be in Nelly’s country store and see the schoolyard out the window.

Now that I am grown up, my idea of community hasn’t changed very much, but instead of physical buildings, my community is made up of people who come together to help each other. Some have physical landing spots in my life, and other support beams in my life come from people who I connect with primarily online.

Kate. She lives probably 15 minutes away, but we really only connect on Facebook. She is constantly encouraging me, maybe even more than she thinks she is.

Brooke. She works full time, but always finds time to text me with a little “hello” or “how are you doing?” She probably also doesn’t know how her support beam holds me up constantly.

Lisa. She lives across the country, but it feels sometimes like she lives next door with how she speaks into my life.

There are many people in my life that make up my community, and some of them probably don’t realize that they have a spot on my dusty street. So…thank you. Thank you for liking my ridiculous Facebook statuses, thank you for texting me, thank you for going out to lunch with me, thank you for sending me birthday cards, thank you for praying for me, thank you for commenting on my little blog rambles, thank you for supporting me.

Thank you for being my community.