I’ve discovered the formula for public speaking: vomit until you don’t care + shit until you’re empty = give a decent talk.

This past weekend was a study in extremes.

The theme of the conference was relief, and I had no idea how much I’d be praying for just that by the time our trip was over. Every time we go to New York, I dig deep into ambivalence: I’m put in touch with how I felt when I lived there six (!) years ago, with all the highs and lows of day-to-day life on that tiny yet huge island. I was so single, and then permanently not; I was lost and found; I was poor yet comfortable. I was happy yet restless, at home but adrift. It was a landing place that became a launching pad, to where I am now: truly, home. On this earth, anyway. But when my feet hit that concrete, a part of me is home there, back to the home of its noisy streets and overpowering smells and steady hum of existence. I miss it, and I don’t. It’s complicated.

This time, it was even more complicated.

We always kick things off, after check-in, with a trip to the Burger Joint. “To go,” we tell them, and haul our bounty up to the rooftop pool, where we add on drinks and a couple of hours of reading and relaxing. This time something wasn’t sitting right. And it wasn’t that burgers and Prosecco don’t mix–believe me, they do. I felt achy, exhausted, and nauseated. I thought I had escaped the The Kid and Little Brother’s virus. I prayed that I had, even while feeling as though I was standing in front of a firing squad.

A few minutes into dinner, the shots rang out.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of dining in a Manhattan restaurant, you know that many of them boast tiny, often single and therefore unisex bathrooms, located usually about five feet from a table or the bar or–in our case, on this night–both. So when I ventured into that bathroom to empty the contents of my digestive system, my privacy allotment was…lower than ideal. After several trips there, I was tempted to be humiliated yet too sick to care. Our evening’s plan–the musical Hamilton–loomed ahead, more like a threat of future regret than the promise it had been hours before. The Husband asked what I thought. “Let’s just go,” I said. “They have bathrooms there.”

So we went. And I made it through without any accidents, a miracle I believe to be on par with the Red Sea parting and Lazarus’ resurrection. Not only a miracle, but a supreme act of mercy, because this show was everything. To have missed it…well, I would have survived. Obviously. But I would have cried. A lot. And to quote one of my heroes:

Sickness kicked back in overnight, shedding any pretension I carried of this being one of those famous twenty-minute bugs. I awoke the next morning to no relief and spent hours in bed. Called my doctor, got some pills called in. Took some OTC pills for kicks while I waited. And waited. Finally, I couldn’t wait any more. We headed downtown to prep.

I had prayed, between trips to the bathroom and for weeks before, that I would be moved out of the way during this talk. Because I trusted the message, loved what I had to say (it was, after all, mostly about TK; what’s not to love?), but knew that my own anxiety–the kind even my dear Xanax can’t reach–could undo me. Could be the thing that wrecked this whole endeavor and kept it from reaching anyone. Could be what reduced me to a sweating, shaking, red-faced mess who raced through the words and ran away from the whole thing. Well, my prayers were answered. And what an answer it was.

Though now it seems almost poetic: my talk, titled “Grace Stinks,” covered the messes of life in which grace shows up. There was an entire section on–I kid you not–horse shit. And that is what God emptied me of, in response to my prayer, in preparation for the words, in fulfillment of a plan: he emptied me of all my shit until the only thing left was my heart, laid bare in the lights on the stage of a sanctuary on 16th and 3rd.

I had finally gotten to the point where I wasn’t nervous. But what a shitty way of getting there. And what a beautiful way of getting there.

The next day I still suffered: one highlight was when TH and I visited the restaurant we love, the place where last year I was so hungover I puked in their (single, unisex) bathroom sink. Well, this year I sharted at the table. You’re welcome, ladies and gentlemen: if you stopped by this blog for propriety, or for a simply-Scripture-filled way of approaching life without the aid of meds, then feel free not to share this one with your friends, because I AM A MESS. I am also not the hero of this story. I’m the girl who gets hungover, who shits her pants at the brunch table, who needs so much help that God sent a debilitating virus to clear her of everything but him. If you can relate to that, though, then come sit by me. Just wear a mask for the next three or so days.

But the next day I also saw mercy: one of my bests showing up at the hotel, turning the corner so that I first saw the flowers he was carrying. He even let me taste his drink. (B, you still okay?) And the last moments of the conference echoed the last words of my talk as we sang the hymn I had mentioned, the one that still sets me free. How did they know?!

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

The next morn was not tearless. I was still praying for relief. And I didn’t get it, not until two days later when I finally woke up feeling like a human being. But I was able to see the refuge I’d been given, that is its own relief: the way I had shed all the things that I thought were true in favor of what actually is: something bigger than me. The places that I used to find refuge in the city–walking on the streets, running in the park–replaced by new refuges: the inside of a theater, the pews of a church. The center of a stage.

And yesterday, taking TK to horse therapy, fighting off nausea while sitting on that bench where I used to be alone–but since being given the chance to share our story, I was able to take a few more with me, if only in my heart: that tiny bench just filled to overflowing with all of us who know the relief of grace.