Full Circle

What we expect our lives to be rarely actually occurs.  While in college I became interested in social justice, sociology, community development and felt a distinct call to live in the inner city and 'do' community development following the lead of such pioneers as John Perkins, Wayne Gordon and his family, Glen Kehrein and his family, Tony Campolo, Bart Campolo and others.  I served as an urban neighbor along side a team of amazing young people for a year in North Lawndale, Chicago partnering with North Lawndale Community Church and the Christian Community Development Association via Mission Year.  This was a dream come true for a young white woman from the suburbs of Minneapolis hoping to begin a lifetime of intentional inner city community development.  During my time in North Lawndale, I saw first hand the complexity of life in the inner city due to lack of investment, lack of resources, and general abandonment by the powers that be.  Lawndale Community Church, Lawndale Christian Development Corporation, Lawndale Christian Health Center and the Christian Community Development Association are all located right in the center of the poverty stricken inner city community working to provide resources and positive change to the residents of the community.  These are long standing organizations who are models and experts in the field of faith based community development.  I learned incredible lessons and built lasting relationships during my time there.  I truly fell in love with the neighborbood, the people, the church and all of the amazing work however, once my one year commitment was completed, I returned to Minnesota.

I had the goal of always returning to Chicago and settling long term in North Lawndale to be a part of this incredible community transforming lives and the entire neighborhood by following the principles of intentional Christian community development-one of which is relocation.  This idea is based on the principle that Jesus left his home in heaven to relocate to earth to serve and save his beloved people.  Jesus chose to leave his easy life in heaven to relocate and restore the relationship between creation and God.  Christian community development calls on people to make the same choice-leave your comfortable community to invest in, serve and relocate to a community in need.  In the past, this idea of relocation has meant moving to the inner city or poverty stricken third world countries, which is what I thought it meant.

I believed wholeheartedly that this was my calling as well-to settle long term in an impoverished inner city community to teach and live and work and worship while intentionally building community.  For many reasons that I will not go into now, that simply did not work out.  Yes I lived in inner city Chicago and inner city Minneapolis for about ten years but nothing clicked.  I didn't find the place where I could connect, serve, invest and grow.  I was very disillusioned with the church as a whole, community development and what my true calling was.  At this point in time I was unemployed and found myself single and pregnant-the father of my child lived in Chicago while I was in Minneapolis.

Because of the circumstances of my life at the time of my pregnancy-being single and unemployed-I decided to move back to where I grew up-the northern suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota.  This was a heartbreaking decision for me but I knew I could not take care of myself and my child on my own in the city.  I needed my family close by.  I ended up moving into a townhouse 1.5 miles away from the home I grew up in where my parents still live, .5 miles away from my sister's family and about a mile away from my other sister's family.  I felt like this was a cop out.  I left the inner city to live in the burbs...

Here is what I have discovered.  There are people with desperate needs everywhere.  The townhouse complex I live in right now-in the suburbs-is more diverse racially, economically, culturally and age wise than any other place I have ever lived-including three different inner city neighborhoods in Chicago and four different inner city neighborhoods in Minneapolis.  My bi-racial son sees kids from Middle Eastern, African, Latino, African American and white families every day.  These kids play together in the playground outside my front door every day.  We hear different languages spoken.  We have single parent households, we have older retired women, we have families, we live among the working poor...

My life came full circle.  My heart for community development has not changed...the logistics of how exactly my life would look is what changed.  I did not need to relocate in terms of my place of origin, rather I had to relocate in terms of my hopes and dreams geographically.  The path our lives take is often surprisng and the places we find ourselves most content may be the last place we ever wanted to end up.

I left this community in 1994 and lived in 22 different places until 2010 when I returned.  Since 2010, I have not only been in the same zip code where I grew up but I have lived in the same townhouse 1.5 miles from my childhood home.  22 places in 16 years led me back to where I belong-home.  For 16 years I was looking for a place where I could live, work, worship and build community all in the same area...and 16 years later, I am back.  Hopefully for a long term investment.  I worship at a church based in this community with long term goals for investing in the area, I work at the high school, I have found my place where all the pieces fit together.