Yesterday, I went to my church women’s group for the first time in over a month. Many things have kept me from it lately, primary among them Little Brother’s desire for me to read with his class (and who can say no to that face?), but yesterday I did both and even squeezed in a walk across the Harbour Bridge in between. Upon arriving, I found only one member of my group there, so we were combined with another group, this one consisting of ladies all my seniors–most by a lot–and I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t just pull a Charlotte and bust out of there.
I stayed, though, and what a gift these ladies were; how wrong I was to think the next hour would be anything but the romp through their sassy attitudes and constant stream of jokes that it was. People, and life, can be surprising. I forget that.
One of the ways life has surprised me is by showing how wrong I can be, to the point that I spend most of my time shrugging these days, wondering what I really know after all, and sort of gleefully admitting I’m probs no better than Jon Snow, which is so freeing. But it doesn’t keep me from having an opinion! About everything! It just means that I’m now open to the idea that I don’t have all the information, and that other people are worth being listened to–especially if they’re from marginalised groups that I used to shun but now live in glorious proximity to.
“What if heaven’s not real?” The Kid asked me on the way home from school yesterday, and instead of firmly telling him it has to be, there’s even a book with the title, he and LB and I had a conversation about doubts and choices and kind of everything, and I felt the space around us expand to make room for all that, even as we drew closer together within that space. This is what it feels like to make room for questions, for differences, for possibilities that I used to shut out in fear but now know there is room for in the perfect love that holds us.
Because here’s the thing: we haven’t been to church in awhile, because pandemic, but also because I’m tired of being gaslit by messages of what we should be doing and lists of places we should show up and, really, by anything other than a message of rest and grace and all that’s been done for me. I’m tired of politicians who claim to be Christians but vote to redirect funds away from the most vulnerable among us (and don’t give me any BS about how the church/private sector should be taking care of them because they’ve had hundreds of years to try and it hasn’t happened yet). I’m tired of kids dying at their desks and of churches sweeping abuse allegations under their patriarchal rugs (fun fact: integrity demands we examine systems that prop up our own power, so pass me by if you’re a man who unblinkingly accepts complementarianism).
What I’m here for, what I’m being kept alive by, are the million little ways grace shows up outside of four walls on Sunday: how ANZAC biscuits taste like the cookies my grandmother kept in a glass jar on her countertop when I was a kid; how swimming in the rain is definitely a thing; how my fortnightly zoom movie group is its own form of church; how it’s cold outside but that means it’s also fireplace season; how LB tells me about his “nervous days” and I get to know–and tell him that I know–exactly what he means, and my entire life can make sense in a moment.
How I still have blind spots, but grace doesn’t, and so it may sound like an excuse, but I am so thankful that God and that grace aren’t limited to the places and parties and people I once thought they were.