"Sort-of"

Being at church is something I’m going to have to get used to again. It means eating my maple roll with a knife and fork instead of picking off sweet brown pieces, shoveling them into my mouth and licking off any remnants from my fingers. It means I have to make sure that none of my undergarments are showing.  Now, I’m not really a show –your-bra-strap-and-underwear-band-kind of gal anyway. Carrie Bradshaw can pull it off-me not so much.  But, at church, this is even more important. What would Jesus do if he saw lace peaking over the top of my jeans! Mostly though, I am going to have to get used to being uncomfortable again.

The church I grew up in I pretty much stopped attending after high school. There was not a college program in place and I went to a Christian college and therefore attended chapel 3 times a week which I felt more than filled my church bucket. I come back for holidays of course, because my mother continued to attend. My siblings and I dressed up and on our best behavior, appear on Christmas Eve and Easter like Punxsutawney Phil or holiday drinks at Starbucks. You know you will see us again, but possibly not for another year. I should note that I doubt people at the church are as excited to see us as they are to find out whether winter is over or to enjoy an eggnog latte. You know those people you know, sort of, like your best friend’s roommates sister you met once at a baby shower or wedding and chatted with about your majors and shoes. And you see this “sort of” at a restaurant or at the grocery store and you have to silently weigh whether or not to approach them and say hi. You know if they see you and know you have seen them...things can get awkward. “Will they even remember me” you wonder and reason, “I don’t want to bother them” not really wanting to risk the chance of a weird encounter with long pauses and discomfited small talk. So you walk past them with your eyes diligently forward or act suddenly very interested in the selection of powdered milk your market offers. Well, that is the kind of relationship I feel with nearly everyone at this church. My childhood church. But, the catch is, they didn’t used to be “sort of’s”. They used to be very much people I really knew. Throughout junior high and high school I was very involved in the church. I was always up to help out making large amount of salad at a wedding being held their (very interesting method by the way) or spend an hour putting the chairs away in the sanctuary. Beyond that was the expected stuff like being on leadership and the worships team. I loved every minute of it. Though our church is large, because I was there so much I served with a lot of these" sort ofs", I dined with them, counseled their children at camp, built houses alongside them in Mexico and led them in worship. And then, somewhere in that time that I was gone, I became the sort or in their path and it wasn’t at the local Chilis, it was in the hallway at church or in line at the coffee bar there. They almost always –no actually always-choose to take the “I –don’t-see-you” option.  And maybe I’m just sensitive (very possible) and maybe they’re looking at me thinking the exact same things, feeling the same way. But whatever the reason, I am GRATEFUL in this time, in this situation. I am grateful that God teaches me lessons about who I want to be and how I want to treat people, through my own pain. I am grateful that experiencing the downside of situations will build my empathy if I let it.

SO…I have decided that in my pursuit to be great…I don’t want to make anyone, anyone, ever feel like a sort of. I don’t ever want to make someone feel like they aren’t worth the minute it takes for me to stop and say hello, smile and ask how they are and really, really mean it. I want to embrace people like I haven’t seen them in a year because they have been fighting in a very dangerous war and I am so happy to see that they are still alive and well. I desperately want to be someone who makes people feel loved and hopeful and empowered. Because that is how God makes me feel both directly and through the ahhhmazing people he has strategically placed in my path. In the eyes of the Lord, nobody is a sort-of. I have made this mistake tons of times and am only just embarking on this quest, so I’m not judging anyone who has done this...we have ALL done it. But if there is someone on your heart that you have maybe not been encouraging as much as you could or someone you have been avoiding because it would be uncomfortable to approach them, pray that God would make you feel loved and hopeful and empowered enough to make them feel the same.