We are all here in this big living room with windows looking over woods and deck. Only five of us here tonight– acquaintances, strangers. We strive to be at ease and the frogs sing down in the creek.
The leader takes prayer requests and we are pious in what we share– a sister, a friend of a friend, an acquaintance with a problem– never selfish or personal, really. She prays and my mind wanders back away home to my menu plans and my checklist and did I run the dishwasher?
The schedule calls for a devotional next, and the woman called upon to share speaks haltingly at first, but soon words are flowing from her lips like a waterfall– tumbling over each other and fighting for first place and jumbling all up into a foamy pool of worry and discontent and fear and uncertainty and then she’s done, suddenly as she started, and we are all still here, but now we are shocked into silence as we consider her words.
Not really her words. Her honesty.
She has, unwittingly, ripped away our comfortable “this is how we do this Christianity thing” masks with her truthfulness. She has exposed her heart to us, and we are not sure how to respond. Perhaps someone should ask for a drink or get a phone call or faint or something to change the subject.
No one does. Instead, slowly, we voice our thoughts, our truths, our understanding. We overcome our shock at her lack of masked propriety. We reveal our own hearts, a little bit at a time.
We minister to one another with honesty and compassion.
And later, as we gather our purses and cell phones and shoes to head for home, we are no longer strangers or acquaintances. We are friends. We are sisters.
This is how it should be in this Body.
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Joining up with Just Write at the Extraordinary Ordinary today.
Together for Good 
This is stunning, and beautiful, and a powerful reminder of the grace found in vulnerability, in sharing.
Thank you.
-Ellie
What an incredible moment to have witnessed… that truth. Man it’s good, but so hard to get to.
This gives me chills, friend. I’m in this place now where I’m working not to shy away from the ugly and messy, in myself and others. I keep hearing that verse in my head where Jesus says, “Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” I wonder how many times I’ve allowed someone’s mess or different viewpoint or offensive statement to keep me from hearing the gospel lived in the lives of others, walking around as if my smooth exterior doesn’t hide some kind of stupid mess, as if no one ever has to choose to see Jesus instead of offense in my words and actions.
All that babble to say, WORD.
Love it when those moments of truthfulness happen ❤
this is universal to any religion. we try to be the perfect image of whatever it is we practice, and it’s in asking for help with our needs/our failures/our private struggles that we truly grow in God. thank you.
It was the frogs. Their song, it does something.
This is wonderful. Oh hurrah. I am so proud, so happy, so awed… I cannot even say.