Dear Friend,

Today, I was thinking about you, actually whenever someone asks me to tell my story - I think of you.  I think of sitting and chatting in your car or over coffee.  I think about serving together, worshiping together and learning together.  


But I don't think about growing together because I'm not sure we were actually real with each other.  How could we be? We were in a place where being the best you could be was valued and it was more important to challenge each others sin than to actually know each other.


One day our chatting stopped.  I thought it was because I wasn't worth anything to you anymore.  In all honesty I sort of felt used.  I had served with you and worked hard with you, but when my life circumstances changed that, the getting together stopped.  


But that wasn't the final blow to the relationship.  The final blow came when 
I didn't have the guts to stand with you.  I watched the whole community ostracize you and I wanted to step out and grab your hand, but I didn't know how.  Everyone around me said, she chose sin, she knew what she was doing, we must break fellowship with her.  But my heart kept saying, I don't know why this was her choice, but she is still one of us.  I feel hurt too, but I believe that she is a child of God, a saint.... a saint who is sinning, but still a saint!  


How I wished grace had been poured out, I wish grace had been poured out long ago, long before the sin, the junk, the mess.  What if long before we had stood together as saints who sin, not relying on our ability to challenge each other's sin but relying on God's grace to resolve the sin around us.  What if just for a second we had taken off our masks and revealed what lay behind them? Would it all have been different?  


But, its not different, it is a mess!  And it will continue to be a mess unless we can stop pretending, pretending that we have to look good to be a part of God's community, pretending that we are the only ones with issues, pretending that our abilities out rank God's grace, pretending that if we just muster up enough strength we can drag ourselves out of the pit, we can be better, we can be mature, we can make the right choices.  Maybe you had to get stuck in a pit so deep, so dark, so ugly that you could only rely on God's grace to get you out.  Maybe we are all kidding ourselves, if we don't believe that we also have to feel the darkness in ourselves before we can see the light of Christ.  


I'm starting to learn to rely on God's grace.  I'm trusting Him to transform me, and I'm trusting Him to transform others around me.  I'm realizing I don't make a very good barometer for other's issues, but Jesus, He is able to do it perfectly.  
I hope this letter finds you doing the same.  I hope that you have found hope and grace.  I pray for you often, that you will find a community where you can be yourself, that you will know forgiveness, that you will know that you are loved and maybe someday we will sit and have another cup of coffee.