OF Thoughts of a Small Town

I'm in that cute little coffee shop I told you about, again. This cute little coffee shop in this tiny little town. While we were here, the local Christian school girl's basketball team went to State Championships. The whole town was impacted by this, it seems. There are signs and posters everywhere. Everyone knows everyone else and their mom here. I feel as though I've stepped out of real life and been able to take a deep breath. A breath I didn't know I needed.

I have never spent a significant amount of time in a small town before and let me tell you what I found in this one. Impeccable hospitality; the school we spoke for housed us in a vacant home stocked with snacks and blow up mattresses for everyone. In the morning we awoke to find a Dutch woman cooking breakfast for us in the kitchen. Awesome. When we stayed at this coffee shop for hours the owner made us cookies and let us stay after closing. She just hollered from behind the counter to us, "If you want anything, help yourself! And if you leave just go out the back and lock up." Every meal was provided for us. Either it appeared in our refrigerator magically, or we were told to put it on the school's tab at whatever restaurant we happened to go to.

I met a woman from Sacramento and she told me why she loves living in Egerton rather than Sacramento. She knows everyone, and she can let her kids run around the whole town knowing they'll be okay. "It's not that there aren't bad ones here, but you know who they are, and so do your kids and you just know to avoid them." We were informed upon arriving that no one bothered to lock their doors. It just simply isn't necessary. When we rented movies at two different places, neither of the people renting to us bothered to put our names in the computer. They knew we weren't from here and so it would be pointless to do so. They also trusted us to bring the movies back.

Quite frankly, I'm touched by how beautiful a picture of community this is. It has to be what Heaven is going to be like someday. I'm sure there are things about small towns that aren't desirable, gossip for example. But I get the feeling that this community would do anything for one of it's own, the basketball team being evidence of this. The socialist in me loves this (don't take that as a political standing, cause it's not). I'm simply stating that community is a beautiful thing, and when a community is small enough that everyone has a friend on the basketball team and thus half the town disappears for away games, it fills my heart with satisfaction, maybe even joy.

The thing to note about this community is that it is based around Christ. It almost makes me tear up seeing this. This is what it's supposed to look like, people.

We had a conversation around the table last night. Christina asked what people find to do here. David responded that they probably do what we did, sit around the table and laugh till our stomachs' hurt, tease and analyze one another. In short, they build relationships.

My thoughts on driving in here were cynical, "How boring this simple life must be." My thoughts on leaving are that after I've gone everywhere and seen everything, I'd like to live somewhere just like this. Where my future kids can run around town free of fear. Where everyone has everyone else's back. Where relationships are more important than our computers and cell phones.