I've spent a lot of my life trying to get it right, to find the answers, to polish things up and make them look less painful or messy. And that is E X H A U S T I N G. So a little while ago, I decided it had to end. Running from your past turns into running from yourself and I don't run. I try to tell the truth about how I got from point A to point E (I'm just getting warmed up). I try to do it in my preaching, writing, and my practice. Yes, we have short and shiny stories that we dust off the shelf to get a job, win a partner's affection, or please the family and friends at the holiday dinner table. But those usually hold within them fuller stories about the messy process that is becoming. These are the heartbreaking and life-changing stories I am interested in. 

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Transformation, in my experience, is hard earned and it comes with sweat, stretch marks, and scary crying. It always comes through the awful and amazing grace of God. So why do I care about transformations? 

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Well I'm a pastor and I'm a pastor because of those transformative moments in my life. Some of them I'm proud of and some of them I'm not. They happened on a bathroom floor at my high school, behind a couch in my sorority house while I dug through Paul's letters and my own tears, and after a betrayal I thought was going to do me in forever. They also happened the first time someone trusted me to preach the gospel on a Sunday morning, when I forgave someone I loved and received forgiveness, and when confetti flew in the air at my ordination. 

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Yet, after all that hiding, these are the stories I keep listening and looking for all around me. When others tell them, they change my life. They make me believe in God again. They lift that weight off my chest and suddenly breath fills my lungs again. I watch as these stories change conversations, shift souls, and create communities of belonging. 

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These are the stories I'm scared to speak and afraid to touch because I know they have the power to transform and rearrange our lives. That's scary stuff. And yet, I can't stop hearing Jesus Christ's words, "Those who lose their lives will gain them." 

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"Those who lose their lives will gain them." 

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Yes, as a Christ follower, I am certain that it's in the burying that we rise. 

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And if we are rising, then why aren't we singing? Why aren't we singing so loudly that people can hear and know and believe that their greatest pain and their greatest joy are not stories to be silenced nor to be shortened. These are stories of resurrection and, like the women who showed up at the tomb, those are stories we have to tell. 

 

And so this is the work of my life: journeying with others through the fuller stories of their lives and re-membering the stories of our communities within the good story of Jesus Christ.