You cannot navigate alone. I spent years trying. I treated faith as personal and private, turned spiritual growth into a self-improvement project pursued in isolation, maybe with occasional input from a book or sermon. I believed that mature Christians had it together, so admitting struggle meant admitting failure. I maintained my Sunday morning persona while wobbling wildly in private, convinced I was the only one who couldn't get this discipleship thing right.
I was wrong about all of it.
You can't see your own blind spots. You can't recognize your own patterns while you're in them. You can't tell when you've crossed from productive wobble into destructive drift when you're the only one observing yourself. Your internal dialogue will always be self-justifying, self-protective, biased toward preserving your current trajectory. You need external reference points. You need other people.
But not just any people. Not casual church acquaintances. Not performative small groups where everyone maintains their Sunday personas. You need authentic community with fellow wobbling disciples willing to see you and be seen, who can help you navigate because they're navigating the same tensions themselves.
For our family, authentic community centered around a table. It's been in eleven houses. It's heavy, awkward, and my wife has wanted to replace it since day one. But it's been the centerpiece of almost every pivotal conversation our family has had. Why? Because we made it a place where performance stopped. No phones. No TV. No distractions. Just conversation. Just presence. Just honest interaction about real life. It's where we discussed struggles and victories, doubts and faith questions, where we celebrated and grieved, worked through conflict and made major decisions.
I learned that authentic community requires authenticity over performance. You have to show up as your actual self, telling the truth about where you are, not where you wish you were or think you should be. "I'm struggling with doubt and it's scaring me." "My prayer life is non-existent and I'm not sure I even care." This level of honesty terrified me initially, but it's the entry point for real community. If you won't show people your actual reality, they can't help you navigate it.
Community requires consistency over convenience. For years, we protected dinner time at our table no matter what else was happening. That consistency created the foundation for conversations that mattered. Sporadic connection never gets past surface level you spend all your time catching up on logistics and never get to the real stuff.
I discovered community's specific roles in navigation. Community provides external perspective so other people can see patterns you can't see while you're in them. They notice when you're consistently wobbling in one direction, when your course corrections are making things worse, when the gap between your values and choices is widening.
Community challenges your rationalization. Your mind will justify almost anything given enough time. Other people can say: "I hear what you're saying, but I don't think that's actually true." This isn't comfortable, but it's essential. Without it, you'll drift and convince yourself you're navigating. Community encourages when you want to quit. In exhausted, discouraged seasons when you can't see any progress, you need people who can remind you of truth, point out growth you can't see, encourage you to take the next step even when you don't feel like it.
Now that our boys are adults, that same table serves a different function. We host small groups there, have young couples over for meals and robust conversations about discipleship and life. The table adapts to the season, but its function remains: it's a place for authentic community. Building this required intentionality. I had to reach out, invite, initiate, create structure and rhythm. I had to be the first to be honest, going first in vulnerability to give others permission. I had to give specific permission: "Ask me every week about my marriage. Notice when I'm complaining and call me on it."
Authentic community makes the wobble visible and manageable for your navigation. When you're wobbling alone, you can't see the pattern, you just feel disorienting motion. When you're wobbling in community, others can see it more readily. "You're wobbling toward isolation again." Or "Your wobble amplitude is decreasing it’s great that I'm seeing growth."
Community also normalizes the wobble. When you see other people who are mature and respected people wobbling also, the shame disappears. You realize that this is how discipleship works. We're all navigating, all course-correcting, all learning. You need your version of this table. A space where authentic community happens, where performance stops and real conversation begins, where you can wobble together, learn together, grow together. Build it. Protect it. Show up to it.
Because you cannot navigate alone.
