we are a people in need of everyday people. 

the ones who ask, the ones who do without asking, the ones who listen, the generous ones.

family, not family…those who feel like family. those about to be family. 

the ones who show up to celebrate. the ones who sit in the grief. 

the ones who are there when the wilderness turns into the desert. 

the ones who don’t give up, who don’t push you out. 

the ones who know all about grace because someone gave them some. 

the ones who stay when life misbehaves and disobeys and goes it’s own way. when it’s unruly over and over and disruptive, disorderly and undone. 

i grew up in a culture of religious beliefs with the underlying tone that i didn’t really need to focus on having inner strength or rely on that audacity i talk so much about. God was in control of every twist and interruption and decision and i just needed to follow along. i should walk a dotted line from there to there while my future would be safe from a world where life wasn’t lived outside of a church “bubble”. i should marry and dwell within one religion and stay on a fairly straight path of the next right thing and find the one plan for my life among likeminded people. if things went awry the best thing would be to hover in the waiting places of “everything is fine. i’m not the one in control”. it will be ok*.

in my naiveté - i believed that life would be just like that. check. check. check.

until…as a newborn adult of 23, i didn’t realize that a whole lot of twists and interruptions were lying in wait.

life as an adult led me off of a somewhat expected trajectory. (thank goodness).

by my mid thirties, unruly had officially begun and i had no choice but to take control of me and my family of five.

i was walking around as if i didn’t have a worrisome mind while my heart was fractured, decisions had to be made and my bank account was bare.

somewhere along the way i found real life in the chaos and realized that disruptions are not always divine and answers don’t always come in the fallow and that we do in fact have the capacity and wisdom and courage and stamina to choose survival over acceptance.

i somehow developed an awareness that not only could i begin to stand up under the power of my own stubbornness - i had to. this was the God given part of the divine plan…that i would survive because of the innate capacity to fight against the settling in and accepting. i wasn’t required to plant roots in the soil of chaos or whatever else came my way just for the sole reason that there was a grander plan.

cracks began forming in the idealism of my sheltered self and i was trying to balance the pieces until i could glue them all together again. i was raising my fists and shouting silently that i could fix it alone for the sake of the perfect story.

that’s not how this works…

i soon found out that the “straight and narrow” was a bit over crowded with idealism and some self righteousness and life was better lived in the realism that begets the wounded healers. read: the ones who have walked through the proverbial wilderness.

sometimes we're desperate to shout about our pain- to hand some of it over, we need to talk about it but we don’t know who we can trust and it takes massive courage to admit that we need help trying to repair the cracks. i wanted to be surrounded by people who knew…the ones who had a mix of tested faith and a furious longing to flourish.

i wanted real people living real lives outside of rote religious language and “God’s will” platitudes. ( not that there’s anything wrong with that ) i needed the wanderers in the messy who were tethered to their innate grit and steadfastness and to experience others face to face, to bear witness to the countenance of others wholeheartedly and with listening eyes.

i think we long for the places where people hang around after the how ARE you and the lately and the coffee is cold, the kind where we stay beyond the easy. i need the one where we know we’ve stayed overtime but we make a plan to come back and start from “ok, tell me more…”

the catch ups and coffees and for the love of a familiar voice - maybe even a phone call. we need to linger together in silence and laugh together until we can’t catch our breath. maybe it’s just a hulu watch party or chairs around a table with the berry chantilly cake from whole foods. we should start a group text reserved for the life changing as well as the i washed my hair with real water and real shampoo.

what i now know is there is a whole world on either side of that “straight and narrow” and full to the brim of hurting, stunning, bleeding, healing, unraveling, gracious, happy, strong willed survivors who know and offer a place of love and tender care.

can we curate spaces to share about the imperfect, rumpled, disheveled parts? it's time not wasted to lean forward to those who can barely whisper

life will always be unruly with some added chaos. we will be shaken, wounded, fractured and healed…and probably we will be surprised by thriving when we least expect it. 

call someone. bring cake. stay until the coffee is cold.

be kind to you.

-RuAnn