Family: Monday-Dinner and Prayer

My wife and I spent this past Summer working with Service Over Self (http://www.sosmemphis.org) in Memphis, TN. We got pretty attached to people and what God is doing here so we decided to stick around. We moved in with Abbye and Jeff and Jason their housemate. It's been really wonderful being together as a household. We're learning to be a Family here in the inner city of Memphis.

One thing we've been trying out is Monday night Family dinner and prayer. There's nothing fancy about it. Tonight Jeff cooked up a really inventive (because he invented it and it was great) pasta dinner for us. We ate together, shared worries, shared the good things, handed around our hearts. Then we prayed together. Simple. Beautiful. Slow.

Katie and I get strange looks and funny questions when we mention that we (only having been married since January 2011) have decided to move into a little household with another couple and a single friend. We live in a culture that is convinced that an individual can only obtain an identity in isolation, or that married folks need to be separated from everyone else so they can learn what oneness means. That's ironic to me.

I doubt that what we're doing is for everyone at every stage of life. Thus far though, it has been a blessing to locate our marriage within this little Family here on Malcomb street. Our individuality really only has any meaning when it is submitted to the community of the Body of Christ.