The Treasure in the Trash

 My lunch friends and I regularly fight over trash. I don't quite remember when or how it started, just that somewhere through the stress of the winter and spring it turned into a bit of a game. Try to grab each other's trash before anyone else can - the sneakier the better. Or, sometimes even more connivingly, take someone else's trash with an "I dare you to stop me" look good enough to keep the forfeiter of trash to concede with minimal-to-no argument. Relationships sometimes come into play - the chief of which tends to be that if the patriarch of the group takes your trash, you don't argue - unless you're one of the ones actually related to him in which case you might stand a chance, though that depends on the day. Yet most of the time it's sideways glances waiting for someone to let their guard down, or trying to catch someone post-meal sleepiness or stress-induced haze so that you grab their trash before they can realize what's happened or when they don't have the energy to object.

Two of us tend to participate more than others, but each in the group takes their turn from time to time. The one who has only participated a time or two (and who most strongly objects to her trash being taken) makes fun of the others of us for our ridiculousness - and from the outside, she's not wrong. I'm sure it's humorous to watch the days that one of us slams a hand down on a trash pile (either our own or another's) to make sure that we can claim it before anyone else can. But what even she knows - what I think each of us knows - is that it was never about the trash.

It's been a difficult string of seasons for us. There have been minor shifts through each one, but they all begin to blend together. As I look back on my personal journey entries from a year ago, not much has changed, not really. While everything has increased in its felt intensity - for better or worse - the roots of everything remain the same. The strained relationships have grown heavier. The friendships have grown stronger. The logistical stressors remain the same while increasing in their frequency, urgency, and intensity. But the hardest part is that the further along in time we move, the more isolated it feels we become. From roles becoming more compartmentalized to tasks being so abundant that the opportunities to work directly together have diminished to near nothingness. Even the opportunities to process through challenges together during moments of rest often get interrupted by crises and outside drama these days. Everyone is struggling, but no one can offer constructive support.

Enter trash. It's not like it's any massive stressor to gather one's meal waste and walk it to the garbage can less than half the room away. We could each take care of our own without a second thought. But there is also a not-insignificant relief to spending those extra 10 seconds sitting, to remove the extra moments of transition (for those of us that struggle with such things), or to not be separated from those extra bits of conversation sometimes lost when walking just out of earshot of the table. It isn't a burden to throw away our own trash, and yet it somehow manages to be a momentary burden lifted to not have to.

The best part? It's also a momentary burden lifted to throw away another's trash. Because it was never about the trash. We've never been human trash pandas (or racoons as the everyday person likes to call them) trying to collect as much trash as possible. We were never fighting over the trash. We've been fighting over the opportunity to serve each other.

Now there's a danger to this when you're dealing with a group of people who each have their own level of independent streak. It can be easy to resent that someone is serving you by doing something you're fully capable of doing yourself - the days you resign yourself to defeat rather than accepting the gift. And if you lose at the game too many times in a row, there's a level of shame that can start to sink in about not serving enough - like the lovely stretch of weeks where I was in such a haze that I almost never managed to throw away my own trash much less anyone else's and started joking about "being really off my game" to deflect from how inadequate I felt for being more of a burden to others rather than a burden-bearer for others through that time. And there's also the danger of seeing it as a conquest won rather than an opportunity filled - the former being a power play while the latter displaying more humility. And it's a fine line to walk that's, at least speaking for myself, probably a 50/50 shot between success and failure.

Yet despite our moments of flawed attitude, the act itself manages to remain to be one of beauty. Because through the days and weeks and months that we cannot help to lighten each other's greater loads, we can take on one small task. We can bring a moment of lightheartedness through the "argument" of who will claim power over that day's trash. And, when we allow it, our souls can find moments of rest both in claiming the opportunities to be a servant and in submitting ourselves to allow others to serve and care for us. And some days, in all the stress and struggle, those moments are enough - at least to get us to the next moment. And in times like these when everything so often feels to be storm and stress, it's worth holding on to the small good things you've got.

Unworthy

I'll never forget the night that first solidified my place in one of my core friend groups. We were sitting in the living room of one of their houses after a choir rehearsal; it was the first choir season that I'd decided to hang around after rehearsals without an explicit invitation to any conversation that was going on. My first couple of seasons I'd often snuck out the door, never feeling socially part of things and afraid to impose - but that summer I knew that I needed people, and I felt more at home with these people than any other group. So I stuck around, worried that I was selfishly imposing, feeling like the glasses of wine offered were out of obligation, hoping that the people I was with weren't annoyed by my presence. Then suddenly I got pulled into a conversation about plans to spend a day at the nearby amusement park celebrating one of their birthdays, and I was asked if I was free on that date. I answered that I was and made a note on my calendar, but I spent the following weeks unsure whether I was actually invited or if I'd been included in the conversation out of obligation because I'd overstayed my welcome and that they hoped I'd forget by the time that day actually rolled around. It took being added to a group text a few days before the outing for me to feel confident that I was actually meant to be part of the plans.

Friendship has never come easily to me - though I didn't always realize it. When in second grade I started getting pulled for a weekly "Friendship Club" with the school counselor and a handful of girls in my class, I saw it as no different than getting pulled for Gifted Education opportunities. Sure, the other girls and I were all a little shy, but I also saw us as really nice girls and figured that's why we were given the privilege of fun games and activities (and Jolly Ranchers!) with the school counselor every week. It took my first post-college therapist asking if I'd ever been part of such a thing for me to recognize what that "Friendship Club" actually was - a social-emotional skills intervention group. Former teacher me looks back now and sees the obvious social-emotional learning basis in all those fun games and activities, but back then?

That 20/20 hindsight is a real kicker. Realizing that how you saw yourself doesn't match how the world - or at least how your peers - saw you? It's a hard pill to swallow. In every personality quiz ever, I identified myself as the friend that others would come to for a listening ear or advice - only to realize in adulthood that I was never, and had never been, the person that friends came to when life got hard. I saw myself as mostly normal - outside of being a smart kid and a church kid - only to look back and realize how often I was shunned by the normal kids and left to hang out with the "weird" ones. Where a decade of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in my young adult years would tell me that the way I react to people - and especially potential friends - is based in thought distortions, I feel these days that my instinctive reactions are far more based in subconscious pattern recognition.

My childhood was littered with failed friendships and potential friendships. There's the first grade friend who I approached to play with at recess early in second grade only for her to tell me she wanted to play with her new classmates instead, after which point we never played together again. There was the time I asked one friend to give me lessons on how to fit into her larger friend group; I never quite executed, though, and was never welcome to play with the rest of them at recess. There were the only neighbor girls my age who one day finally invited me to join them after I'd spent years silently longing to be included - only for them to spend that day literally running me through a series of tests to determine if I could join in their group (and rewarding me with tiny candies when I did well), after which I was never invited over again - I assume I failed their tests in the end. And there was the fourth grade friend whose larger friend group decided on a day-to-day basis whether or not I was allowed to hang out with them. Then there were the times where I was tolerated due to proximity but never really welcome. The two girls my age at church that I told our Children's Ministry Director of that we were the Three Musketeers - only to realize later in life that the two of them were best friends who just tolerated me at church. The times that girls I was individually friends with invited me to their birthday parties only for me to spend most of my time there awkwardly on the outskirts of the activities and social interactions. Or just the seemingly-infinite number of times that we were supposed to pick a partner or group to do something with at school or at church where I was always part of the random collection of leftovers who got thrown together because no one else wanted us.

While I eventually found a solid core group of friends who carried me through my junior high and high school years (thank you, honors classes!), I floundered any time I was apart from them. The only choir kid in my core friend group, I spent much of my time there as a loner. Any church activities apart from my friend group I often found myself the tolerated tagalong (though the adults generally liked having me around). When I got to college, I found what I thought were friend groups only to realize that most times I was friends with one person (or occasionally two people), and everyone else just tolerated me - which means that if the friend was making plans, I got invited, but if anyone else in the group was making the plans, I got left out. Further into adulthood when I joined activities in an attempt to find friends, and I'd find people who I'd enjoy spending time with at the activity, I soon realized that they were often spending time together elsewhere where I was just welcome when we were partaking in the activity together. (Given, it's possible I missed some subtle invitations along the way seeing as I found out that the friend group that invited me on their amusement park day had apparently spent years trying to figure out how to get me to spend more time with them, and I was fully oblivious to that fact. As another more recent friend likes to say - I'm like a vampire; I need a clear invitation to know that I'm welcome.)

Somewhere along the line, my subconscious collected all these experiences together, began recognizing patterns, and developed coping mechanisms based on the conclusions that came to light. I began to operate based on the assumption that while I remembered most people, I was never memorable to them. Feeling less like a welcome friend and more like a tolerated nuisance, I stopped interacting without clear invitation to do so. And after years of struggling to discern the line between friendship and acquaintance and getting burned by wrongly assuming friend, I began to hold back and let others make the first move. You know that Hollywood trope where a tween/teen writes a note to their crush asking "Do you want to be my boyfriend/girlfriend? Check 'Yes' or 'No'"? I've spent countless times in my adult life wishing I could do the same for friendship. Instead I wait for others to start the conversation. I wait for others to extend an invitation before I dare reach out myself. I let others send the friend/follow requests on social media, though I'll generally gladly accept immediately after watching them be recommended to me for months.

It's no wonder I spent a decade in therapy with an official diagnosis of Social Anxiety Disorder. The message in therapy was clear - my brain was deceiving me; I needed to work on having the courage to be vulnerable and dare to reach out. When I finished my second intensive group therapy program, the traditional inspiration rock that the therapists gifted me had the word "Brave" on it as a reminder to be brave enough to be myself because myself was a pretty great person that the world would generally like. It took another four years to fully come into my own, but I did get there. I felt confident in my career. Confident in myself. Confident in that strengthening friend group from choir. Then after years of the world generally saying "Be yourself!" I suddenly got a new message - "No, not like that! Try again," (in the most disgusted tone possible).

As my career fell apart, I lost my educator friends first. And then global crisis struck, and I lost most of the rest. I held on to a handful, but it felt a far cry from where I'd been mere months prior. And I gave up. I liked the me that I had developed into, and I think I was on the verge of living into the full depths of the person who God had created me to be. But outside of a handful of people, no one wanted that version of me. And after years of work, my energy at forming myself into the right kind of person was spent - so I gave up. Gave up on work. Gave up on relationship. Gave up on my place with God. I was done.

I spent the years that followed raging at the world. But I also spent a lot of time internally spiraling. Popular psychology suggests that if you keep running into the same disagreeable social situations, you should probably stop looking at what was wrong with everyone else and turn inward instead. And no matter which set of standards for friendship I looked at, I continually came up horribly short.

By my generation's standards, I'm a walking red flag. Where the generations that came before us struggled to set and/or respect boundaries, my generation has swung in the opposite direction with boundaries set hard and unyielding with the aim of safeguarding self and self-chosen protected groups at all costs. While the motivations behind the boundaries are understandable, it's made friendship feel like an impossible transactional balancing game. Any friend who cannot perfectly match your contributions of time, energy, emotion, service, and finance is deemed toxic and in need of immediate desertion. So as someone who's flowed in and out of burnout for most of my adult life, unable to survive in isolation but also often unable to give back as much as I need to take - where does that leave my value as a friend? And it's one thing when it's a bunch of social media trends, but when you start to hear your friends express - either directly or passive-aggressively - that they feel like their efforts in friendship in aren't being matched even as I put forth as much energy as I can muster in those times? Despite other friends assuring me that I'm not a burden, I've ceased to be able to believe their encouragements.

Then there's finding the balance of who you're supposed to lean on and how hard you're allowed to lean on them when life gets rough. Most of my friends at this point are married, and their spouses have become their top priority of people they support and lean on - as it should be. But where does that leave me as someone who's single and left as no one's top priority? There are those who lean on their biological families, but as someone who's an only child, who's not particularly close to my extended family, and who sometimes needs not a parent to talk to, I find myself leaning on chosen family - but how hard can I lean when so many of those people are close enough with their biological families to rightly prioritize them? Some lean on their church communities, but not quite a year at mine (and even less time since I started connecting with people), I'm still trying to find my place amongst pre-established groups, to figure out where I can step in and where I'm intruding. I generally feel welcome to join in in particular activities and conversations, but I don't know where I can reach out. And even as deeper connections begin to form, I find myself terrified that once they get to know the greater depths of me, they'll retreat in fear and/or disgust as so many before have done. In the midst of all of that, there's knowing that people have multiple circles of friends - levels of friendship of varying closeness - and that's to be expected; even Jesus called only twelve to be his disciples and picked just a few of those to be his closest confidantes. But what if the people who I place in my innermost circles - those who one does life with and those who are "soul friends" - wouldn't place me in theirs? Where does that leave me, and how is it fair of me to ask them to exist in my life at that level of closeness when they already have others who fill those kinds of roles?

Even looking to Biblical truth leaves me with questions at best and with feelings of inadequacy at worst. In an ultimate question, where God calls us both to cast our burdens on him (1 Peter 5:7) and to bear each other's burdens (Galatians 6:2) - where does the balance lie? Where do I lean on humans more than a human should bear or lean on them so hard that I don't let God in as much as I should? And where do I retreat into God so far that I isolate myself from people in dangerous ways? Where there are those that say that Jesus is all we need, how does that balance out with the Biblical clarity that God made us to live in community? And even if I answer those questions, I look at the ways the Bible describes friendship - of service, of putting others before self, of being a positive influence. I regularly fail to fulfill all of those traits.

It turns out that I'm just self-aware enough to be cognizant of many of my flaws as a friend. I'm often flaky and forgetful. I haven't managed to arrive most anywhere on time since I got the worst of my anxiety under control a handful of years ago. I spew far more emotions than what I probably should and share the non-pleasant pieces of my personal history far too easily. I regularly spend my time leading up to a social outing reviewing topics of conversation worth pursuing only to forget them as soon as an opportunity for conversation presents itself, leading to one-sided conversations and awkward silences. And my bandwidth for being helpful in concrete ways has a far-too-narrow band of conditions to it where any deviance from those conditions results in me having a full meltdown that not only inhibits my ability to provide aid but creates even more work for whoever I was trying to serve. Other times the natural defender in me emerges and I overprotect to a point of overstepping - or to a point of encouraging them to indulge in snark and judgement while I join in the same. I am loyal to a fault but in a way that is far too clingy to a point that I have to continually self-monitor to prevent straight-up jealousy and possessiveness (a preventative effort at which I often fail, at least internally). I am far too demanding of others' limited supply of time. Far too emotionally dependent, especially on those whose presence is regulating, often parasitically so. Far too willing to trauma dump uninvited while retreating from open invitations to true vulnerability.

I am at all times, it feels, every worst version of too much and not enough. I am too much take and not enough give. Too much stubborn and not enough humility. Too much emotion and not enough rational. Too much of all that makes me deserving of flashing red warning lights as a friend and not enough of what it takes to be a desirable companion through any season of life. My faults as a friend far outweigh my strengths. My sins outweigh any love I have to offer. At my core, I am wholly unworthy of friendship.

It was one thing when my social circles were wider, when I could spread my crazy around a bit more easily, at least enough to be a tolerable participant in social interactions and gatherings. But these days? My circle of confidantes has shrunk so substantially, and we all seem to continually hit major stress points all at the same time. Who am I to lean on them when they're already stressed to the max? Who am I to pour out all of my irrational crazy at their feet when they have much more concrete, real struggles in their own lives - when they're weighed down by tasks and conflicts while I sit in the discomfort of insecurity in friendship and the loneliness of even an ounce less of time together than I'd prefer? So increasingly I retreat. And spiral. And retreat further. They are worthy of whole-hearted support that I don't know how to provide. I am worthy only of my self-imposed isolation.

There are times when I can hold it all in - the spiral of insecurity and resultant self-loathing. Times that I can shove it down far enough to be at least an ounce of the friend that those in my innermost circles of trust deserve. But it always eventually bursts out again, often before I can even stop myself. On the best days, I manage to hold it in well enough that I'm able to ignore that it's there (though the highly-observant eye can catch it). On the good days it comes out on drives home from work or church. On the bad days it bursts out in unstoppable tears as I become the girl who can't stop crying at work for the umpteenth time. On the worst days it pours forth as verbal vomit, adding to the loads of my already-overburdened friends before I know how to stop myself - and then I spiral all the more.

There came a time last fall when my own burdens had lifted enough while some of my friends' burdens grew heavier that I prayed in earnest about how to be a better friend to them. At the core of the situation, I saw their pain and struggle and wanted to alleviate what I could. The answer God provided me was an unexpected one - "Just continue to be there." It wasn't the answer I'd wanted, but the scripture He brought forward gave reasons good enough that I could accept it. I wasn't meant to help protect my friends from those trials; I was meant to walk with them through it. There existed some level of relief to that - at the time I took it to mean that I was being too hard on myself, that who I was in that moment was enough. But as weeks and months passed, I continued to find ways in which I fell short, and my spirals continued to grow. In a week where our women's Bible Study at church was looking at the spiritual practice of being in community with other believers, I silently wept as I considered who those innermost circles of friends might be for me while fearing both that I could not offer them what they offered me and that their innermost circles were too full for me to claim them for mine - and with the burdens I knew they were already bearing for others, it felt unfair to even dare asking to add my own to their loads. A couple of months later I spent a full work day spiraling, unable to hold back tears after a series of days where I felt like I was repeatedly nothing more than an emotional parasite, asking others to help carry my load while too often being oblivious to their need until it was too late - they deserved so much better than I. And as life circumstances led to continual periods where I was naturally isolated from my most valued friends, particularly in times when they were able to spend time together apart from me, I spiraled in loneliness and shame over the jealousy that resulted.

There were times I retreated physically, trying to force myself to return as soon as emotions were at least outwardly hidden. But each time I retreated a bit more emotionally. Closing myself in felt like the only way to protect my friends from the kind of damage my unchecked emotions seemed to wreak. It was the only way I knew how to deny myself in order to support them - but it meant that even when the invitation for openness was there, I continued to hide behind walls - I just didn't realize how badly until one of my friends called me on my avoidance of depth in conversation on an evening of life processing. The funny part of it was, that evening was the third time that week that a friend whose companionship I felt unworthy of had each, in their own way, expressed their gratitude for my friendship. A week when the most closed-off friend admitted that I get one of the least filtered versions of her. A week when the friend who I fear won't be able to handle the darker sides of me thanked me for loving her exactly as she is in all her optimism and outward striving to continually be more Christlike. A week when a friend who I assumed got all the wisdom she needed from her family expressed appreciation for my perspective. A week when I'd learned that two of them had had a conversation about my value as a listening ear. And it was just days later that another friend affirmed that I'm supposed to be a part of a notable calling that God has set before him.

And the thing is? These types of moments and conversations have happened all along. As I paged back through old journals to confirm timeline of events writing this post, I ran across far more entries than I remembered expressing gratitude on days where my most valued people shared their appreciation for my friendship. So I try to rest in the gratitude of those assurances rather than drown in the shame of needing them to calm my insecurities in the first place. Because the fact of the matter is a knowledge that behind those assurance is a God who is merciful, God who sees me doubt my worth and responds by giving my friends the opportunity to present evidence to the contrary, and they have stepped into that calling.

Friendship is a weird thing when you think about it. There are no bonds of blood. Nor of romance. Nor of contract. You wander through life, find someone whose companionship you enjoy, and claim them for some or all of life's journey. There is no obligation to stay, just a desire to do life together. Other relationships may be bound more officially, but the Bible mentions the value of a good friend enough times that friendship must still hold some level of importance, even in God's eyes. And without bonds of blood or marriage or contract, friendship is a tie far more simply - maybe even easily - broken. To stay is a choice made each step of the way. Now why my friends continue to choose me is a deep mystery to my mind. It baffles me that they continually look at the falling-apart, overly emotive, socially bumbling, obliviously self-centered, failure-to-be-a-servant person that I am and declare "I pick that one!" And that they continue to do so the more of my crazy that gets revealed, the more that I snark and equalize just to see how far they'll let me push? It is a grace.

The truth is, the conclusion I drew last fall when God's call was for me to just be there for my friends in the ways that I already have been - the idea that I was enough - that was false. Because the fact of the matter is that on my own I will never be enough. I am human, and I sin daily, often most hurting those who I'd least want to wound. God's insistence that it was not my job to protect wasn't just about my desire to protect from outside struggles but about my tendency to want to protect them from myself - because to protect from myself leads to isolation that creates further chaos and damage.

"It is not good for man to be alone" ~ Genesis 2:18a

In practice and in context, it's a verse generally used to describe marriage. Then as I conversed recently with a friend about my struggles of late with singleness, she brought it up as a reminder that even if God doesn't have marriage in His plans for my future, He would still find a way to surround me with friends; I am not meant to be alone. I am unworthy of friendship, but that doesn't mean that I am meant to be isolated - instead it offers those that have accepted God's call to be my friend to be His vessels of grace in my life. And when I allow myself the vulnerability to humbly accept that grace, He is able to use me in the same way toward others.

"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." ~ 2 Corinthians 12:8-10

God has a tendency to call the least worthy to do His work. Jacob, Isaac's second born, stole his brother's birthright, and yet God brought the line of His people through Jacob anyway. Moses was raised as an Egyptian, was a murderer who tried to cover up his crimes, and yet God still called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Rahab was a prostitute, and yet she is listed in the genealogy of Jesus. Jesus called not the religious leaders but the common - even the detested, such as Matthew, the tax collector - to be His disciples. Saul, a great persecutor of Christians, became Paul, the writer of much of the New Testament who carried the gospel to the non-Jewish world. Time after time, the Bible tells stories of God calling the unlikely and unworthy to carry out his work - and he continues to do so in the present age. Nearly all the best spiritual leaders I know in my own life, official or otherwise, have at some point - especially early on in their calling - questioned whether they were fit for the role. And I've had multiple conversations with friends recently who questioned who they were to carry out a task that God had called them to take on where I was able to remind each of them that their knowledge that they were unequipped and unworthy was precisely why God had chosen them for the task.

Last fall when I asked God for the wisdom of how to be a friend, I wanted to ease my friends' burdens, but my pride also wanted the boost of feeling like I could be a support. As I slowly but surely begin to admit that I can't do it on my own, God more and more often steps in. A day that I was running on fumes but a friend was struggling, God gave me the ability to act as a regulating presence. In days where my overprotective nature could have joined in angry rampages as it has in the past, God has bestowed me with a peaceful groundedness to bring calm to the storm. On days where optimism won't cut it, God has offered me the opportunities to just be there in precisely the moment where it is needed. Each act of friendship one that I couldn't fulfill on my own but where God worked through me to provide my friends with what they needed - and that was always the point.

Because any striving to grow on my own still never would have been enough. My friends are worthy of so much more than me, and by allowing God to work through me, they receive all that they deserve. As a friend recently described her own, younger realization "You mean I don't have to do it on my own? There's this thing called the Spirit who helps me?" In Paul's letter to the Galatians, he doesn't write of the fruits of one's works or personal strivings but the fruits of the Holy Spirit - God's guiding presence in each believer (the whole of Galatians 5 is probably worth reading here). And when we remember that, it is God who receives the glory. God the creator of friendship. The creator of relationship. He who made us to live in community deserves all the praise. So I may be unworthy of friendship - but God who is gracious and merciful has given me the gift of friendship anyway because he created us to be in relationship with each other as we are with Him.

That's not to say that I don't still have to strive to be better and do better - it's an act of daily surrender. Of laying friendships before God to keep them from becoming idols. Of humbly asking God to work through me to be who my friends need each day. And I can't promise that there won't be more spirals because, well, I'm still human, still learning to let go of my own worries and submit to God's plan, still so susceptible to all of Satan's snares. But each day I learn to trust God a little more. To trust that while I on my own am unworthy, God has deemed me worthy of all his promises - including relationship with others. And more and more, I try to hold to those promises and trust in His plan. And in the moments when I succeed in believing those promises, I begin to find peace.

525,600 Minutes

525,600 minutes.525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes. How do you measure, measure a year? ~ "Seasons of Love" (Rent)

Most people get reflective about the passage of time as marked by birthdays or the beginnings of new calendar years. I, on the other hand, tend to look back on the anniversaries of major life events. Not the typical ones that you can find in the greeting card section at your local store. The ones that would seem random and unforgettable to most but where I can see life fully diverging onto a new path.

Earlier this month marked a year since I began writing again. If you'd told me that two years ago, I wouldn't have believed you. I thought that writing was a skill that had been lost a major and a minor burnout ago. But it's been my most prolific year of writing thus far. I know it's not always shown up online the way it has in the past. But I also filled an entire journal for the first time in my life, and I already have two thirds of the next one filled (and that's just since mid-January). It's been a year of rediscovering the craft of writing. The kind where you write something, then let it sit a little bit (though a little bit, as it turns out, sometimes means hours and other times means months) and then return to shape it once more. And I'm slowly learning to let God take control of the course of what I write in a way that I'd never before considered.

This month also marks a year since the beginning of a major transitional period at work. The first of numerous departures due to changes in life circumstances. The first glimpses of what added leadership was to come. The first opportunity to begin to trust that God will provide a way to get things done in what feel like impossible circumstances, which turns out to have been a small-scale test run for the present. It's been a year of trying to understand each other better as a team, for better or worse, through the transitions of personnel departures and arrivals. Personally, it's been a year of unexpected twists and turns wherein moments that felt like they tore down all that I was proud of and confident in turned out to have helped push me toward a new role. A role that uses all of my intellectual strengths while being guided by a leader who celebrates those strengths and compassionately counsels me through my weaknesses. It's also been a role that has brought all of the social challenges I expected and more, where I'm still trying to discern where God is leading me and what God is teaching me in the midst of my frustrations and doubts.

This month marks a year of learning the importance of rest - and in finding fellowship in that rest. A year since learning the refreshment of resting together instead of feeling like one has to soldier on for the others to find rest. It's been a year of learning to listen to others when they tell me that I need to slow down, and for the first time truly planning rest into my life, even if it sometimes gets delayed. A year of learning to find peace in simply being still for long periods of time, especially out in nature. A year of ending the habit of moving constantly (often literally) in order to push through the hard and instead allowing myself to settle into the pain of those moments - and allowing God and others to join me in that. I'm still not perfect by any means. And there are still so many moments when I fall back on the trap of abandoning my own rest if I think it may alleviate pain for those in my innermost circle (whether they've asked for it or not). But I am slowly learning, little by little, day by day.

This month marks a year since I started seriously looking for a church home for the first time in many years. A year since I dared entertain the thought that there could be welcome for me in a Christian community in a post-pandemic world. A year since I started researching all of the unfamiliar congregations in my area only to land on a somewhat familiar one that, when reading about their core beliefs, I was astounded I'd never considered before. A year of slow entry (including the couple of months it took me to, you know, actually convince myself to show up on a Sunday) and gradual warming up to people who were somehow miraculously willing to follow my pace in acclimating. A year of finding comfort in a place that now feels like home. A year of gradually finding community with believers who are so self-admittedly human. There's still a journey to go. Still a finding of where my smaller niche is. Still a discovering of where I fit into people's lives when we leave the walls of the church building - though I've begun to get Facebook friend requests over the last month, so that's a pleasantly surprising start. But I so solidly feel that God led me to this congregation for a reason, so I trust that He'll continue to reveal the next steps of this journey in His perfect timing, and I'll continue to pray to that end.

This month marks a year since truly beginning to dive into levels of friendship that are equal parts comforting and terrifying. A year of discovering how to use sheer goofiness as a way to care for others and allow them to care for me. A year of gradually letting people inside the walls of defense I built up around myself in the time after leaving teaching and then poorly coping through a pandemic. A year of learning to trust people enough to comfortably laugh at myself when they send a direct but loving reality check my way. A year of slowly reopening myself to a once-cherished but long-abandoned love language. A year of honesty in friendship in a way I've never dared before, of saying aloud what I've never dared speak before. A year of hard conversations that sometimes take weeks to process but that leave me better off in the end. A year of admitting more unseen struggles, of allowing more tears to be left unhidden. There are still so many days that I distrust the stability of friendship as it plunges into that depth of vulnerability. Days that I unconsciously push and test to see if people will stick around afterwards. Days that I come to the ledge of asking the hard question or admitting the hard thing only to retreat rather than taking the leap of faith. Days that I isolate rather than risk my deepest brokenness becoming the reason that I am abandoned once more - or worse, discovering that what I thought was relationship turns out to have been merely tolerance. It's a battle I often fight moment by moment, but maybe another year from now the vulnerability will feel less like a risk that I dare to take and more like a comfort I lean into when life on my own gets hard.

This month marks a year since God began a relentless pursuit of me like He's never pursued me before. A year since He brought me to my knees and made it clear that we were about to take on a long, difficult journey like I've never been on before. A year of wrestling then submitting then wrestling and submitting again in a repetitious cycle. A year of Him giving me bits and pieces of direction and then compassionately tolerating all of the why's - Why me? Why this? Why now? A year of Him taking mercy on my doubts in His plans and in my ability to follow them again and again and again - I've never empathized with the apostle Thomas more. A year of discovering His character in new ways that inspire awe. Discovering His sovereignty in understanding how His plans are better than my plans (that, as it turns out, He breaks for good reasons). Discovering His providence where He uses little moments to care for me in massive ways. Discovering His grace through how He works through those around me to show mercy in so many instances where I'm anything but deserving of it. It's been a year of spiritual growth and refinement like I've never experienced before. A year where God's plans have often scared or angered me in ways that make me want to run in the opposite direction or build up defensive walls once more, but also where He's not allowed me to do so - where He's lovingly grabbed onto me tightly and never let me go. A year that I've spent so much time looking back and wondering why God's pursuit of me has strengthened in intensity and urgency - but I might be beginning to understand it all.

This month marks a year since a day that I experienced God move in my life in a massive way. Since a simple directive became so intensely clear. The start of many smaller ones that were to come. And then a year to the day later I watched God move in the same way elsewhere, in a way that I'm not at the center of but am supposed to be a part of. And suddenly the why of His pursuit of me over the past year begins to make sense, right up to the series of hard, deep, but good conversations I had with some of those in my innermost circle in the days leading up to God allowing me to watch Him move in a way that I recognized all too well.

I'm still waiting to see what the next year has to bring. I know what smaller directives God has set before me for the immediate future, and despite knowing that I'll follow them the why's have already begun streaming His way. I don't know what God's greater plan is, but if I've discovered anything over the past year, it's that His plans have always been greater than mine, and that He will show providence and grace as I struggle and stumble and even fall. And despite the fear and confusion, I do truly look forward in joy to seeing what He reveals in the time that is yet to come.

On Mountain Dew

Through most of my 20s, I wasn't really much of a pop drinker. Most of the time, I was a water drinker. In fact, the rough days at work that I spent thinking "I'm going to have an adult beverage when I get home," I arrived home to say "You know what sounds way better than an adult beverage? Water." There were a few exceptions to this rule. Iced tea is my favorite but required that there be enough room in the all-too-small apartment freezer for a bag of ice. And pop is my caffeine of choice (because most coffee dehydrates me so quickly that my whole body turns into a giant cramp).

The problem with being a water drinker is that when you're at a restaurant the water is free. I've often felt like a cheapskate for telling a server that all I want is water with my meal because I know it means less revenue for the restaurant and a lower tip for the server. But really, I often just want water with the exception of the occasions when I really need the caffeine or the occasions when a restaurant is the only place I can get another of my favorite beverages (like when Baja Blast Mountain Dew was exclusive to Taco Bell or when Raspberry Coke Zero was available anywhere that had what I refer to as a "Magic Coke Machine"). But most days I order water and try to not feel guilty about simply getting my preferred beverage. Where this becomes problematic is when I go to a restaurant and intend to get just a beverage and not food. I'm not going to show up somewhere and only order something that I can get for free, so I try to find a beverage that I actually have to pay for, and it is here that the real story begins.

In each of the last few springs of my teaching career, I was involved in a variety show that raises college scholarship money for local graduating seniors. After each night's show, members of the cast gathered at a local eatery to spend time socializing. One of the last years I was involved, I was feeling unusually social and decided to go out on some weeknights as well as the weekend. Being adults, most people who went out after the shows would order a beer. Personally, I'm not a fan, though I've attempted and failed to acquire the taste for beer on more than one occasion. Even then, I generally tended toward avoiding alcoholic beverages on school nights. Planning to get only a beverage, free water was out of the question, so I asked what brand of pop was available. Pepsi. There are very few Pepsi products that I find drinkable, and only one of them is consistently available in restaurants. I ordered a Mountain Dew. I had no clue what I was in for.

I got a little flack that first night. I was reminded how horrible Mountain Dew is for me (or people in general) with its crazy-high sugar content. I promised I'd order my mixed drink of choice the following night, a Friday. But it was the weekend of the April Snowpocalypse of 2018, and on Friday night the roads were awful. Not knowing how long I'd stay given the tough road conditions, I opted away from alcoholic beverages again. I ordered another Mountain Dew. I got more grief for it that night, though as I desperately tried to explain my decision, one supportive new friend declared "You do you, Heidi!" effectively ending the disagreement over the Mountain Dew I'd ordered. Two nights out in a row. Two Mountain Dews. I never imagined anything would come of it. It was probably a mistake, then, to post something on Facebook a few days later when I found the Baja Blast variety of Mountain Dew in a store for the first time in two years; after two years of only ever getting it on trips to Taco Bell, I was ecstatic. The response I got from my cast friend who most vocally opposed my two Mountain Dew orders? A brief comment on the status: "Noooooooo!"

A few nights later I went out for dinner with a few of my new show friends before we went to a volunteer event that evening, meeting at the same location where our post-show cast gatherings had taken place. Knowing that I was going to be ordering food that night, I fully planned on ordering water to go with it. When our server came to take drink orders, I couldn't even get a breath in to ask for water before that same friend who'd commented on my Facebook status days before jumped in.

"Just, please. Anything but Mountain Dew!" she pleaded.

"I'll have a water," I said to the server matter-of-factly, without a moment of hesitation.

"Just ignore her. If you want a Mountain Dew, order a Mountain Dew," a less outspoken member of our dining party assured me.

"No, really, I just want water," I insisted, standing my ground.

"She'll have a Mountain Dew, put it on our bill," he told the server, and I decided to let it go at that point, not wanting to argue any further. It was another evening, another Mountain Dew.

Fast forward to the end of the week at our cast banquet when I was definitely sticking to just water because caffeine would not have been helpful to the extreme anxiety I was feeling that evening, and I also try to avoid adult beverages when I'm having a rough mental health day (though there may have been one later that night because peer pressure is a thing). I was sitting at the table post-major panic attack (which only one person at our table knew about) with my cup of water trying to feel like I wasn't an intruder sitting at a table with a pre-established group of friends who I'd really only just started to get to know, when the friend sitting next to me pointed to my cup.

"I can't help but notice that this isn't Mountain Dew," she commented. Post-panic attack me had had it. (To be fair, I'm fairly certain that the friend who made the comment was unaware that less than an hour before I'd had a panic attack so bad that I'd sequestered myself in a bathroom stall and taken over a half hour to reemerge).

"I am never going to live that one down!" I despaired.

"Nope!" she replied. "It's who we are, and that's what we do!" It was then that I realized it. This group of people who I desperately wanted to find friendship with were the kind who occasionally (okay, more than occasionally) razzed each other for the little things, but always from a place of love and trust that together they could laugh at their mistakes and flaws and be okay with their own and each other's imperfections. And to be fair, I'd doled out some crap of my own during show week a couple of weeks before. And the first time I did it, the response I got was, "Oh, you've learned to speak my language!" On that banquet night, I admit that I questioned if my anxiety levels could handle being a part of that group. And though the following year in that performing group I came to dole out as much as I received back, another major mental health crisis later in which I lost trust in most every friendship I'd developed in the teaching world, and I retreated from the love language of sass and snark once more.

The use of sass, snark, and sarcasm as a love language has never come naturally to me. I mean, I had plenty of sass growing up, but it was sass born out of a struggle to identify and communicate big feelings at best and out of malice at worst. I was all-too-familiar with the taste of soap as a young child, and when that common consequence failed to have any effect, my parents had to graduate me to tabasco sauce. And in the face of a world that made no sense or felt like it was spinning out of control, snark has often been the only coping mechanism that kept me functional. But to use those in a way that lovingly and lightheartedly held my friends accountable or kept them humble? Even when I tried, I'd often fail. And the me who has through my entire life regularly taken things far more literally than they're supposed to be interpreted continues to feel the pains of rejection far more often than I generally care to admit when snark and sass are thrown my way, even when I'm well aware that it's meant to be in love and not malice. Yet somewhere through adulthood I've developed a knack for building my deepest friendships with people for whom snark, sass, and sarcasm are their native tongue. It's a skill I've had to develop to keep up with them, but outside of that relatively brief time with my show friends, it's one that I've rarely felt comfortable with.

You see, I originally wrote much of this post over five years ago and for reasons that I can't recall, I never actually published it at that time even though it read as a fully completed post. There have been times that I've occasionally returned and appreciated the craft of what I'd written back then, but each time I found myself resigned to leaving it in the drafts, knowing that the hope and peace with which I'd first written it lay shattered in millions of pieces that seemed impossible to repair.

And yet.

One day this winter while sitting at lunch with my work family, there ensued a discussion on our waning snark filters in the midst of stress. One friend non-seriously pondered if an alcoholic beverage might be the solution to dull the levels of snark that seemed inevitable to making it through the rest of the day. I took pause, reflecting on an evening this fall with a different group of friends when a more-tipsy-than-usual me fully unintentionally dropped my filter when provoked by one of the friends present that night. Mind you, I would have felt equally comfortable dropping said filter with that particular friend without the evening's adult beverages. I've always struggled to get mental health professionals to understand that when I say I only drink socially, it's not in order to feel more comfortable around people but because I feel comfortable around those people in the first place. In fact, I only drink around people whom I fully trust and feel safe with so that I don't have to worry about how people react when alcohol removes my filter whether I'd want to have one or not - because they'd likely hear the same thing on nights that I choose other beverages. So the idea of alcohol as a tool to hold in snark felt laughable in my case.

"Nope. Alcohol wouldn't be helpful. That's how the snark starts to pop out," I piped in during that lunch conversation at work.

"I'm sorry, start?" the most blunt of our group retorted, eyebrows raised in her signature lovingly accusatory look.

And suddenly I realized that she was right. Because after years of questioning exchanges of snark, I'd somehow regained a comfort level. After job after job where work relationships had gone sideways the moment I unmasked, I'd found a place where I could use snark as a coping mechanism once more, and though there were times that I'd been understandably lovingly and graciously corrected, the rejection and judgment I'd often faced elsewhere never followed. Even more surprisingly, my once-nearing fluency in the love language of snark, sass, and sarcasm had begun to reemerge. It was only a week or two earlier during another day's lunch at work that the other often-literally-minded member of our group had needed to tell us that while he understood that the rest of us have relationships in which we comfortably throw snarky jabs at each other, he needed to not be a part of it that particular day. A day that I'd spent the verbal sparring session comfortably holding my own against the rest of the snark participants. So those at my lunch table were plenty familiar with my snark.

"Fair. The snark would start to pop out places that it shouldn't. You get one of the most unfiltered versions of me," I responded to the friend who'd made the candid accusation.

Because the fact of the matter is - I can really only handle the exchanges of snark and sass and sarcasm in my innermost circles of friends. The ones who have proven that they'll stick around despite the flaws they lovingly - but bluntly - point out. The ones who handle my failed attempts at sarcasm with grace. The ones who have repeatedly walked alongside me without judgement on my more unnecessarily opinionated days. I mean, I can certainly dole it out elsewhere given the opportunity, and there are times of notable or continual distress when it accidentally seeps out in unintended places - like the evening this fall at dance class that I gained the label "Spicy Heidi" after the week's work stress used up the entirety of my filter energy, leaving my nonverbals fully unguarded, after which I found myself steeped in feelings of guilt and anxiety despite the fact that there was truly no malice behind my response. And the ability to take sass and snark lovingly directed my way? It still often comes with heaps of anxiety and feelings of rejection. Half the reason I try to hold in my own snark is because I know I can't handle someone sending the same vibe back at me.

But my work family? They've seen nearly all the worst of me over the past year, and for whatever bafflingly inexplicable reason, they still stand by me. There are a lot of days that I struggle to trust their steadfastness - through recent months in particular. Countless days where I wonder if their tolerance of my presence is wearing thin. If the only reason I'm still welcome is out of the forced proximity of working together. And yet there are the funny meme text exchanges on evenings and weekends. The suggestion of setting regular times to get together outside of work far more frequently than I dared ask. And countless verbal sparring matches that never once made me question our friendship - even gradually teaching me how to lovingly laugh at myself for quite possibly the first time in my life.

Socks recently purchased on account of they made me think of conversations with the work friend most responsible for me learning to laugh at my own ridiculousness. (And I only later realized that they color coordinate well with both the regular and Baja Blast varieties of Mountain Dew)

I may no longer be in close touch with those whose friendships were to me in many ways defined by a few nights of Mountain Dew, but I've never been able to look at a can of Mountain Dew the same since that series of evenings. At the time it represented a point of growth in how I handled anxiety. And for a lot of years since then, it represented a pleasant memory wrapped in the sorrow of what I had lost. But today it serves as a reminder that when you find a group of people with whom you can exchange comments on each other's flaws with the perfect balance of accusation and compassion and humor, it's okay to let your walls down and trust that your friendship is going to be okay.

Encountering Grace

Sometimes I wonder how many people realize how angry of a person I tend to be. I mean, if you were around for the earliest years of this blog, you're probably aware. And if you paid any attention to my Facebook account from about 2019 to 2022, you're almost definitely aware. But in person? My most common threat response is to go into fawn mode - to placate whoever is in front of me however necessary to get out of the situation as quickly as I possibly can. I'm a people-pleaser who is agreeable in person and will seethe for hours or days afterward. There are times that it comes in handy, especially in my current position at work where I'm coordinating members of various teams of people - internally and externally - who don't always see eye-to-eye. But it also means that a lot of people outside my innermost circle of safety never come face-to-face with the darker, uglier side of me.

But that side is often there, lying under the surface, that anger. At times it's been a coping mechanism to stay functional. It's a lot easier to continue to get things done at work or at home through anger than through feeling the hurt that lies beneath it, especially when these days that anger is so intertwined with not seeing eye-to-eye with a few key others whose action or inaction causes pain to my friends - a protector at heart, I'm nearly always at my peak rage in the scenarios where the people I care about are getting hurt. The thing is, when that level of anger goes on for as long as it's been going on, it has a way of turning into bitterness, and, in my case, my inability to get a reign on that bitterness manages lately to cause further wounds to those same friends I'm trying to protect. Every. Single. Time.

I lose my filter. I add to their burden. I make their lives harder. I cause direct pain. And each time, I spiral. And I retreat. Far too aware of how undeserving I am to remain a friend. Far too afraid of the condemnation I know that I'm due in return.

And yet.

The first time that I was notably caught off guard came during a stretch when my bitterness-fueled anxiety led to selfish actions that made a couple of my work family members' jobs much harder during a stretch that they were suddenly thrust into decision-making roles. It wasn't anything that I'd done overtly, but that didn't change the understanding that knowing had I acted differently, it would have made their lives easier. On the day it really came to a head, I spent a solid chunk of the day in full-on avoidance mode, but, having recently committed myself to being better about honestly admitting my mistakes, I eventually worked myself up to sharing where I was at with one of those friends. I'd spent at least an hour trying to run through how to approach the conversation before I started it, and I'm still pretty sure I did most of it wrong, but instead of the condemnation I was expecting for how I'd acted, what I received was full caring and concern for how hard I was being on myself as a result. What I experienced was grace.

A couple of months later as things at work were transitioning to a new normal, my frustration and confusion spilled over into avoiding a hard conversation with one work family member while venting about my anxieties to another who, while I never asked her to step in, I knew full well was likely to do so. What resulted was a scenario far too resemblant of those in the too recent, still painful past where everyone had often been pitted against each other in manipulative ways, and the situation nearly boiled over. Yet the next day as I had frustrations rise once more, the one who'd been most exasperated the day prior stood with me in my vulnerable, anxiety-ridden resentment and worked to counsel me through it despite the pain I'd caused him just 24 hours before. Further grace that I didn't deserve.

As the months passed, I racked up further moments of grace. Some large, some small. I began to find safety in the vulnerability of admitting not just task-based mistakes but character flaws and poor decisions. Which on some level was good because my stumbles continued to hurt the people I most wanted to protect, to a point that it motivated me to begin working on the undercurrent of anger and bitterness that's always run deep. But after a while the guilt began to seep in and I feared that I had taken too much advantage of the grace and of the safety my work family provided. Meanwhile as departmental structure and roles shifted, I suddenly found myself providentially in a new role with one of the biggest offerers of grace as my new supervisor. Despite my gratitude to find myself under his leadership, the shift in hierarchy led me to retreat. It's one thing to share with a respected and trusted co-worker your character struggles; it's a whole other thing to tell your boss.

As we experienced the growing pains of shifting personnel and structure, I made it my goal to avoid adding to anyone's ever-growing stress loads. Ever-aware of my shortcomings, I began to withdraw. But trying to go it alone, I constantly failed in some way, shape, or form, especially as the stressors of my new role became apparent and frustrations of the past continued to simmer under the surface. Then there came the stretch of a few weeks at the beginning of the year that I went into with a single-minded goal of "I am going to do everything possible to be sure that I don't cause problems for my work family members" - and failed constantly. Where other work stressors drained my energy, my filter wore thin around those who I knew were safe, and all the worst of me leaked out in their presence. It came to a head on a day that I said and did all the wrong things and was continually in the way - both figuratively and literally. I mentally kept describing it as "Open foot, insert mouth" day, which I recognize came out as the converse of the usual phrase, but that somehow seemed a rather appropriate alternative - my mouth needed to be locked away somewhere it couldn't be used. By the time I got home, the tears of guilt began leaking out and continued for most of the 24 hours that followed. Weighing whether my work family would be more worried by a me that couldn't stop the tears or more worried by a me who was non-present, I realized that I felt too ashamed to look any of them in the eye after the preceding day and opted to go into full avoidance mode where tasks of the day didn't force us together. I felt like nothing more than a toxic parasite who took what I needed from the friendships while being a drain on them, offering only negativity in return. To my advantage, on that day of avoidance most of them assumed that I was swamped with work-related tasks and chalked my absence up to that. My boss, who had been around me enough to see the full day of tears, pulled me aside the following day trying to dig into what was going on, wanting to offer support; I gave the vaguest possible answers, too afraid to admit the character flaws at the root of my spiral day to someone in an authority role, despite knowing his heart. He walked away clearly less-than-satisfied, but honored my choice to not share details. That day I rejected the opportunity for grace.

I eventually pulled myself out of that day's spiral, slowly but surely. My ability to filter my level of work frustrations new and old improved enough that I ceased to feel a burden, though I could feel the wheels on my sanity beginning to break loose and tried to ignore it. I didn't so much care what happened to me so long as my friends were okay. It was a solution that seemed like it was working. Until it didn't. Until I watched their loads get piled higher where I felt helpless to come to their aid, and all of a sudden all of the worst of me exploded. Where one went on a raging tirade, I encouraged it - even joined in - rather than provide calm, rational alternatives. Where another was already overburdened, I added to the load. Where one tried to bring some sense of calm and logic to the chaos, I snarked back in return. And a last one got caught in the crossfire of my anger-fueled impulsivity. Plus where anger was once the catalyst that allowed me to remain functional at my job, my work quality took a notable hit in the types of details that are usually my specialty. It was almost as though I was watching myself burn up everything around me in flames ignited by an atomic bomb of rage, and I couldn't stop myself - nor did I particularly desire to. I spent the evening that followed continuing to seethe, and it became the first time in recent memory that I couldn't sleep because of the anger pulsating through my body.

I awoke still angry the next morning, not necessarily wanting to address its causes but wanting to at least have better control over it. Where my anger was directed at those farthest outside my circle of safety, the people who'd been caught in its crosshairs were the people I most wanted to protect. I'd for the first time in months found myself at a comfortable, peaceful point with all of them, and I'd destroyed it all in one fell swoop. In guilt and shame, I prepared myself to have to pick up the pieces, knowing I deserved whatever critical response they wanted to direct my way. I turned my filter up to 11 with the one who I'd joined in rage the previous day. I gave a meager apology to the one who'd been caught in the crossfire. I avoided oversharing with the one who didn't need further drama added to her plate. And I resigned myself to having a long-avoided conversation with my boss about where my head had been at.

My boss had only a week or two earlier, in his shepherding way, taken a moment at the end of our lunch break to remind our work family of the dangers of allowing anger to turn into bitterness and the damage that bitterness can do. I didn't disagree with him at the time, nor did I question the level of relevance of his reminder, but I wasn't in a mood to deal with it at that point. So on the day following my hurricane of rage, I figured I was in for a repeat of that previous talk. Instead as I shared my struggle, I was met with the response that it sounded like I was right on track - that I recognized where I'd stumbled and was looking to do better, to fight the right battles, and the best thing I could do was to not give up that fight. He assured me that my struggles of the preceding day didn't change my status with God, and reminded me that God can still use my mistakes for His good. And when I expressed my fears that I'd stumble and make work harder for everyone else once more, my boss reminded me that I am not powerful enough to usurp God's plans (and thank goodness for that!), and that God would have grace for me and for all those who my stumbles may affect. Despite all my fears going into that conversation, I was met with compassion and encouragement. I was met with grace.

Last fall in my church's women's Bible study on the topic of varying spiritual practices, we spent one week covering the practice of confession. One of the points was the importance of confessing your sins not only to God but to another believer who will hold you accountable while also meeting you with grace - and how confessing to others in such a way generally leads to the sin losing its power over you. And in many ways, that's what happened on the day I spent picking up the broken pieces of what my rage had destroyed. By the end of my conversation with my boss, my heart felt lighter, and through the rest of the day a calmer, cooler head prevailed. The anger dissipated, at least for that time, and the choices I made were ones more likely to support and not cause greater burden to my friends.

That's not to say that the day was easy. I still spent some time sitting in the guilt, deservedly so. Our morning break was filled with a tense silence. Lunch wasn't much better. By afternoon break time, the air began to lighten once more, and by the end of the day there were glimpses into normalcy. I'm not saying that all is back to where it was, and I'm figuring that there will still be a variety of hard conversations ahead. But in the midst of all of the damage that my ugliness wrought, there still lie bits and pieces of the image of grace.

In the past year of cultivating work friendships deep enough, valued enough, and safe enough that I claim them as chosen family, I have learned far more about the experience of grace than I ever imagined - and far more than I realized I had yet to learn. For if this is the vastness of imperfect human grace, how much deeper and wider must run the immensity of God's grace for me? If my imperfectly human chosen family will stand by me and continue to move forward with me after seeing so much of the worst of me, what more does that say of a perfect God's promise to never abandon me, even knowing the greater depths of my sin?

It's a reminder I've needed in recent years. It wasn't so long ago that I'd given up on my place in God's plans for redemption - as in I'd fully resigned myself to believing that I was destined for an eternity in hell. So to repeatedly experience such vast grace - often through the demonstration of those who I once feared for their association with a Christian denomination with a reputation for its judgment and condemnation, no less? It's slowly but surely bringing me a new sense of peace. I know there will be a day when the human grace fails - humans are gonna human. But I hope that when that time comes I'll have built enough confidence in God's grace to rest easy in it and continue to move forward.

Even more so, the grace that I've experienced is slowly transforming me. It's so much easier to move forward with a drive to do better, to be better, when the guilt and shame aren't there weighing you down or even leading you to dig in on the defensive. I'm not the same person I was a year ago in so many ways that I didn't imagine possible, in ways for which I'm grateful. And perhaps, slowly but surely, as grace transforms my heart, it will help to wash away the bitterness in a way that allows me to be not just the receiver of grace but the one who demonstrates it to others in such a way that they might also begin to find peace in the even greater grace that God offers.