Living in a smaller community and ward
I wanted to record how much I love living in a smaller community.
Serving in a smaller ward
-You are so NEEDED. There are people who desperately need your leadership, your talents, your gifts, your family's strength. I am so grateful I get to live in a place where I can help people all the time, and we all need each other.
-We are unique and blessed by those who love us and love our kids. There are not many young families in our ward. Our kids get so much attention and love, we are so blessed. My kids have so many adults who care about them and know them well.
-There's no cliques or social pressures at all-- you all desperately need each other and you figure that out pretty fast. For that reason it's also harder to judge each other. When you're lonely you learn to stop thinking about yourself and figure out who needs your help.
-You learn how to make friends with people that maybe you wouldn't have picked. When we first moved from Utah I didn't think I could do that. But the longer I live here the more I realize friendship is spelled T.I.M.E. and that is how people become your close wonderful friends. Also, the more time you spend with each other the more you rub off on them, so if you don't like someone right now give them a little while and you will be surprised how you start to figure out how to enjoy each other's company. I learned a valuable lesson when we moved to a tiny town when I was in high school. When it comes to friends, all you need is at least ONE. Let one be enough, and reach out to everyone in love.
-In a small ward, you get to know each other really really well. It is my favorite thing. Imagine living in a place where you know each other's families and siblings and interests. That is where I live! It's so much easier to serve when you know what people are struggling with, the dynamics of their family, and what is important to them. I LOVE living in a small ward. Most of them are not like me but I love them!
-Our youth program is small but we are grateful for it! We make it a point to go to every youth activity and try hard to help our kids form friends with kids in the ward (they all go to different schools) so they have that support system. But it's good to remember that just because someone is a member of the church doesn't mean they will be a good influence on your kid. Also, there are lots of good kids in the world who are not members of the church. You also can't predict the future! None of my kids are in high school yet and we currently feel very good about living here. I grew up in many places without very many members and having a huge LDS peer group for your child is not always what the Lord needs for your child. Just because your child won't have a big LDS population during their teen years does not mean you shouldn't live there. Don't try to predict the future, trust in the Lord's plan for you and your family.
Living in a smaller community
I LOVE living in a smaller community. Our community is not as small at the one I went to high school in (my graduating class was 17), but I don't live in a big metropolitan area.
-When we moved here I looked at greatschools.org My kids' schools do not have the highest ratings. Ratings might give you a general idea of a school, but they sure don't tell you the whole story. They don't tell you the culture of the school, what the teachers are like, or most importantly if it will be a good fit for YOUR child. I think sometimes we think we need to live in the school district with the absolute highest rating in the area we are living in. I now realize that that is not true. There are a myriad of factors that contribute to a great education, and how well the school is ranked should not be the deciding factor in if a place is right for you.
-I LOVE that my kids can be involved in so many things! Our school is big enough that they offer many sports and extracurriculars, but it's not so big that they have no chance of participating. My kids get to be in plays, play on teams and feel needed. They get to be a big part of their community, learn leadership, use their talents, and make a difference in others' lives and that's important to me. Also, the SCALE is so different in a smaller community. Productions are small, the soccer complex is small, getting to things takes less time and are closer together. It makes life simpler!
-I love love love that there is no traffic here!! Nothing is ever crowded!
-We know so many people in our community. We get to know people year after year after year. I love living in a place like that, and building relationships with people and knowing them well. You can serve each other more and love each other more. It's a lot harder to do in a bigger community.
Cons
No place is perfect and it's so important to remember that.
-We have less cultural opportunities here. Growing up I loved going to really well done magical plays and musicals, which there are few of here. Our entertainment options are few (we don't have any children's museums, or amusement parks, we have one trampoline park, everything is on a smaller scale). We do have a few options in Indy at least (45 minutes to an hour away).
-We have less food options. We have quite a few, but we sure were spoiled in Provo with the delicious and variety of yummy food places. There are less stores here, but we still have a Walmart, Target, Sams Club, all the major fast food (except Chikfila!!). We have a mall on the smaller side, but honestly when was the last time you stepped into a mall?! Online shopping makes rural living not even a sacrifice!!
-While my kids have lots of opportunities, they don't have every opportunity. They don't offer orchestra at my kids' school. The music academy in our town is kind of blah. There's a variety of clubs or classes they don't offer here. My kids don't get to know as many other kids, it's harder to move friend groups because there aren't many to choose from. There are some opportunities I would love for them to have that they don't offer here.
-My kids are still pretty different than their peers. I am pretty different. I don't know that moving to a bigger community would fix that necessarily. Culturally we would fit more out West, but I would never want to give up all the benefits we receive by living where we do, and I don't know that I would love living there more than here (I really enjoy being different the majority of the time).
Lower socioeconomic status
I wanted this to have it's own section because many might see it as a con. If you've never lived in a smaller community, you might not be aware that most smaller communities are filled with people of a lower socioeconomic status. People who have gone to college often seek communities where people are like them, or they don't want to commute very far, or are only willing to go to highly ranked schools, or like to have a lot of options and variety of extracurricular and educational opportunities for their kids so they usually end up in very homogenous communities. For me having a big proportion of my town that has a lower socioeconomic status is both a pro and a con. In the small community I went to high school in, it was really pronounced and can make things difficult. Your value systems are different, or the way you think things should be done are vastly different. The town we live in now is a little bit more balanced, although the majority of our town is employed by the Chrysler plant and are not college educated. While value systems are different, I am grateful that there ARE some kids that value education and things that our family sees as important. In addition, I love living in a place where not everyone can afford to go on vacation and there's way less "keeping up with the Joneses." I think it helps us remember what is actually important in life, helps us love and understand people who are different than us and gives us more and more organic ways to serve. I wrote this blog because sometimes I think educated people often dismiss small communities when small communities really really need them, and there are a lot of positives to it that many people have never considered. In addition, I don't know that the best schools and a myriad of educational opportunities should outweigh opportunities to serve and live among people who are different from you, even when you highly value education. As the saying goes, education doesn't just happen in the classroom, and you are trying to help your children develop not only educationally but help them grow in kindness, humility, be service oriented and the highest-ranked school system and suburb might not be where your child will learn those lessons.
Because Ben's job moved in the past few years, he now commutes. We settled on commuting because there were so many of these benefits we didn't want to miss out on. We didn't want to live in a bigger metropolitan area where we would have had to live on a much smaller lot, postage stamp yard, and it would cost even more. I didn't want my kids to be just a number. I think there's a lot of benefits to being a big fish in a small pond, and a lot of giving back you can do. We do miss out on time with Ben, but depending on traffic who knows if living closer would have actually given us back much more. At least for us, it was the right answer for our family for now.
