Personality Conflict?

I'll be honest: The last week or so has been a little rough. On top of leaving my family behind to come back to LA, I picked up a nasty cold somewhere along the way (fortunately, after 2 weeks of being a useless blob on the couch I finally feel like a human again!), and things have felt less than comfortable in my community.

When I got back from Wisconsin, naturally I felt a little bit out of the loop - after all, I missed 6 days of community goings-on and "bonding" time! At the same time, I didn't receive a very warm homecoming and quite frankly, I wasn't sure people were even glad to have me back. And it's not even that they said anything (directly, anyway) to make me think that I didn't belong there...but their tones of voice and body language suggested otherwise.

It took me a few days, but I realized that, coming into JVC, my expectations for living in community were pretty high. And, to no fault of their own, my community has not met them. I guess I expected to be best buds with everyone in my house - or at least one or two of them - and we would all care for eachother on a friend level. I had hoped to feel accepted, encouraged, affirmed, lifted up and supported.

But I don't. I feel rejected by them a lot, made wrong, misunderstood. As a result I've become reluctant when it comes to taking part in their conversations - if people are just going to shoot down what I say, or make it wrong for the sake of making themselves right, why bother?

I heard once that when it comes to roommates, you don't necessarily have to like them - you just have to be able to live with them. By no means am I saying that I don't love the people my housemates are, and by no means am I saying that they don't each have gifts they bring to the community.

What I am saying is that I was wrong to think that I could have tight relationships with 4 strangers and just because I was (maybe still am) willing to build solid friendships doesn't mean that they are.

So pray for us. That God would unite us as a community. That would we lift each other up and cheer each other on as we stumble through our time of service. That we would see the agreeable characteristics in one another than we would things to disagree on.