Something is missing...

My husband and I purchased our first home in December of 2011. It's a blessing that we were even able to purchase a home on a minister's salary. If it weren't for my mom gifting us money and the house being a short sale, we would still be living in our apartment. Which isn't a bad thing, and actually we miss the apartment living.

 Our home. Blessed.

We are thankful for a roof over our heads.

Our house was built in 2004. It's new and has very low maintenance which is great. Our apartment on the other hand was built (according to Yahoo) in 1982. Let's just say it had a lot of quirks. Some family and friends have stated how crappy it was built. Yada yada- we really didn't realize it until we moved into a new home and had something to compare it to.  It's not that we miss the actual apartment, but we do miss the apartment living. We had community there.

 

Taymos and Precious (An apartment neighbor we saw daily)

Really we have no complaints about our current home. We are thankful for a roof over our heads, it does the job well. It's financially affordable-ish, structurally sound, virtually no maintenance. The one thing we are bothered with is our living situation. We don't "do life" with anyone. AND it's OUR problem. We went from front doors being 10 feet away from each other and having conversations with people because we were right in front of them.... to neighbors driving their cars into their garages, only waving (sometimes) as they drive by.

We have made connections with 3 families so far, but we live in a subdivision attached to 3 other subdivisions, there are at least 100 houses. C'mon Sherman's. We are social, I swear!

Something is missing.....    Community.

My husband and I have talked quite a bit lately on our current neighborhood versus our old apartment community neighborhood. What it looks like to be in a community, and to do life with people. We both admitted that we really miss living in our apartment! In our apartment complex, we had neighbor kids over all the time playing with our oldest son. We handed out popsicles, played basketball, talked about God... Talked to kids and adults, all the time. Our front doors were literally 10 feet apart from our neighbors. We saw them everyday. Like "face time" but the REAL HUMAN INTERACTION kind of face time.

Isn't it bad when we know our neighbors by the cars they drive, instead of their names!?

I'm not blaming subdivision living on our social problems, however the combination of subdivision living AND social networking have taken a hit on the way we interact with each other. 

I talked with my grandma today about community, what the hubby and I have been talking about. She said, "people are too dependant on their Internet phones, and our society is becoming very self centered."

It's true. We have become very self centered. We log on to our social network looking for a fix. Whatever it is: tweeting, downloading podcast, facebooking, wanting to know what people are doing, asking for advice, checking up on photo's, publicly announcing where we are eating, who we are with, what our work out consisted of, taking "selfies" (photo's of yourself). Telling everyone what kind of day you've had. THEN after we "socialize" through the social network....we then can go on with our life, because we're important. I'm guilty, are you?

I don't think this isn't horrible to do, but I do believe it is stunting our social growth.

Think about it, we don't have to have face to face conversations because we can sit behind our computers or phones and find out whatever we want without having to have an actual conversation with the person. We can COMFORTABLY do this while we are eating or cleaning, or pooping (Yep I said poop). WE ARE LAZY! We can text, check facebook/twitter/e-mail all in the comfort of our home. We are lacking the eye contact, and the candid moments.

I've had more conversations this past year where I ask a question I all ready know the answer to... Because it's posted on facebook. OR, "let's get together!" And then it never happens. It gets old.

Albert Einstein said, "I fear the day technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots."

We are slowly becoming idiots.  My husband and I want to change the way we're doing life, we're convicted. We've prayed. We want to expand our small circle (family), and not be selfish. We are selfish. We are comfortable. We want God to use us wherever we're at, and right now we're in a subdivision filled with lots of people- who need Him too.

Aye! I pray that we will be submissive and obedient to God's will, whatever that looks like.