Sharing a Home

By Vivian

February 23, 2009

Welcome! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Originally posted at MamaNeedJava
Upon announcing our decision to co-house, or literally share a home with another family, the feedback has been expectantly mixed. Some commented about the state of our economy and the impending need for people to be open to living this way. Some said it was awesome, to let us know how they could help. Some said we were “brave”. Some said it was not a good idea, period.

Fortunately, the decision was made in our hearts with momentous solidarity before we got outside opinions on the matter. There was a certainty that not only were we “up for it”, but that come what may, this was going to be an enriching experience that brings us closer to Jesus, each other, and community.

While it is easier to explain in terms of financial benefits, there’s so much more to talk about. While we were “tested” with questions ranging from lease terms to whether or not we know who will be decorating, we kinda chuckled at how, I don’t know, that’s just not how we wish to approach this. The concept of sharing your home and lives with another family is totally foreign to most of us, and the thought of “giving up” our comforts of individuality and privacy, of exposing another family to our daily struggles, fights, tears, and hang-ups, is not in the least bit appealing. And I understand that — I really, really do. Especially in a culture where we are told that our dreams must be something like that of Wisteria Lane housewives - that the ultimate possession is a better job and a single family home in the burbs, far removed from the “sketchy” neighborhoods and failing schools. We look out for number one, and beyond that a small circle of close friends and family MIGHT be worth our personal sacrifice. With so much on our plates already, we are strapped - we don’t have the money or time to devote to anything other than maintaining our own “world”.

And yet, if I only spoke about the financial or cultural aspects of our decision, I would still be failing to explain the truest reason we desire to share a home. This decision is first and foremost about living out a desire to check out what other sides of God’s heart we haven’t even begun to explore. It’s reading the sermon on the mount and saying - wait, maybe this isn’t just a nice sunday school verse; maybe this is literally telling us how to live, in THIS culture, in THIS time, and for ever. It’s about treating others as equals, as humans who bear the spark of the divine, not competition or annoyances or celebrities or enemies. It’s about sharing what really never belonged to us anyway - our money, our time, our couch - in exchange for seeing Christ at work in the lives of those around you in a deep and personal way.

It’s breaking bread with others, washing their feet and allowing (however difficult it will be!) to let others wash yours. Not from the confines of church walls, or the distance of a charitable donation, but starting under the roof you sleep under (which is also not “yours”).

Matthew 7:11 — “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

Ecclesiastes 5:10-15 — “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless. As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them? The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep. I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner, or wealth lost through some misfortune, so that when he has a son there is nothing left for him. Naked a man comes from his mother’s womb, and as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand.”

1 Timothy 6:6-7, 17-19 — “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. … Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.”

Acts 20:35b — “[T]he Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

Acts 4:32, 34-35 — “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”

This past Sunday night was so awesome. We had church at night, and I didn’t even hear the message or anything, and still I was impacted and filled with gratitude. I love our community we have found in Evergreen so much. Hubby and I helped in the kids room together, something that our church does so differently than any church I have been to. The commitment is so practical and so NOT all-consuming, as you are encouraged to only serve in an area of the church for one sunday each month for 4 months, that you find yourself going “That’s it?!” - without resentment, with room to breathe, with freedom to dabble in other things and explore the ways in which you can pitch in. By the time I returned home, the community had been incredibly generous to us: we had a ride there and back, one person went through her extra knitting supplies and gave me a big bag of needles, another person had brought a large bag of their used baby girl clothes and shoes for Verity, and a few more swapped books with me that were on my “to read” list. There were many loving moments in between that touched me with simple hugs, hello’s, and thank you’s. (I work with some one who is also like this- the most generous, loving, intentional gal I know. She works so, so hard, and is truly sacrificial about her resources. She is amazing!) This is radical to me. It is love, it is family. And it makes me want to give back, to redistribute my skills, possessions, or simply my time, in order to care for the people I am growing to love and appreciate so much. I am so grateful that we moved to Portland and discovered the existence of community, a community that I can honestly say God used to shift our lives so greatly, so much so that I have a loving, healthy husband right now, and a child on the way that I have the privilege of mothering along with Lil’ E.

Life is messy and difficult sometimes. People have issues and areas and lots of growing and loving to do to get passed it. No one is immune. No one is in a better boat than any one else, because we were created to have needs, and to depend on each other for those needs to be met in family and community. The more we get out of our isolation, the more HUMAN we feel. With a little compassion and support for one another, I have hope that we humans are capable of seeing passed our self-centeredness and self-sufficiency, and into a world where pursuing a “LIVING” doesn’t mean a paycheck, it means a life of rich blessings you can’t buy with the world’s best gold.

For me, sharing a home is a place I can start to explore this vision, not only within our two families but also in combining our hospitality and resources to offer it as a small gathering place for community to happen. I do desire and plan to get more involved in service opportunities to the poor in Portland — once I get through these super pregnant/infancy stages.

So this is not a defense, not a “you should too”, and not even an explanation. It is simply a conversation about my life and the ways we are changing as a family from the inside out. I hope to continue this conversation eventually on a separate blog dedicated to the happenings of the new home, one that incorporates the writings of the other adults (and maybe children too!) that will be sharing space. We hope to move next month and are hard at work to find the right place, so if you’re the prayin’ kind, throw one up:)

“And I think that’s what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.”

“We try and make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so a few can live as they wish.”
— Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)

Below are some more resources we are exploring now and as time allows in the months ahead. If anyone knows of more, please let me know!!! :

Books:
Eberhard Arnold, Why We Live in Community.
Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community
Creating a life together : practical tools to grow ecovillages and intentional communities
The cohousing handbook : building a place for community
Reinventing community : stories from the walkways of cohousing
Intimacy and Mission: Intentional Community as Crucible for Radical Discipleship by Luther E., Jr. Smith
The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Blogs/Websites:
The Canby House
The Simple Way
Relational Tithe
Reba Place

Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”:

MENDING WALL
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”