A few Sundays ago, I walked into the church building just as the worship band started up their first song of the service. I made my way slowly through the lobby to the hot water, filled a cup, searched for an herbal tea bag—honeybush had a lovely sound to it—and snapped a lid on my cup. In the doorway to the auditorium I saw my friend, hovering by the threshold, with her young son. I put an arm over her shoulder and squeezed her from the side. We know each other well, keep abreast of each other’s week-to-week and sometimes day-to-day. “Friend,” I said, “I’m here by the grace of God today.” “Yes, me too,” was her reply.
I saw that my husband and daughter were seated near the back, with an empty aisle seat left for me, so I left my friend and took the seat next to my family. Toward the end of the service when the band was playing its last song, I slipped over to the side of the room and asked for prayer from two members of the prayer team. My fibromyalgia symptoms have mostly been in check for the last two years, but in the last two weeks, they’d demanded my attention, interrupting me in the middle of sitting, typing, walking, exercising, cooking, and everything except lying flat on my back.
I received prayer from two gray-haired saints and then filed out of the full auditorium with everyone else leaving the service. I smiled at a person I knew, someone I have genuinely warm feelings for but am not close to. She asked, “How are you doing?”
“Good!” I said, automatically. And again: “Good!”
My brain hiccuped between those two "goods.” It said, Wait-what?!
There were a million split-second unconscious considerations before answering her question the way I did: what was socially appropriate, what we had time to say as the line was moving out of the room and we would go our separate ways, how committed I thought she was to hearing a longer answer, how committed I was to receiving a response, and the people I didn’t know surrounding us who would hear everything I said.
We parted ways and I comforted myself with the truth that I was, in fact, existentially good. I knew the pain would end at some point—maybe next week or tomorrow—and that all pain would end, every tear wiped away, finally. My trust is in God to redeem all broken things and renew all of creation, including my neck and central nervous system, not to mention the intangibles of mental and relational health.
Yet, I felt weirdly incongruous with my own self after the good, good. I guess it’s because I am learning more deeply in this season how very much I need the people of God. People to whom I can say “I am here by the grace of God” and who will completely, totally, unreservedly understand, and sometimes say “me too” in response.
You see, before I had driven myself to church that morning, separate from my husband and daughter who had left earlier, I read a story about two men who stopped to help a friend on a busy freeway.* The friend’s tire had blown out. The men installed her spare quickly, and she drove away, on time for an important event.
“Lord, would you send two men on the side of the road to me?” I had asked out loud in my bedroom, picking myself up off the carpet where I’d been lying flat on my back. It was a weird prayer, anchored in metaphor, not meant literally. I simply needed the presence of people to remind me that he is El Roi, the God who sees.
Back to the church lobby counter with the tea and hot water: There, an old acquaintance had paused to strike up a conversation. He asked a question to which I responded by fumbling through a short summary of my life for the last three years. But midway through my fumbling, he interrupted--not with a question, but with an assertion and an affirmation, with a naming of his complete confidence that God was, is currently, and will be working in my life in a specific, good way. His words spoke to a particular grief in my heart, without my naming it for him, and my voice caught as I thanked him, full of gratitude.
It’s weird and complicated to be in a community, especially in a big church, where intimate conversations are hard to come by on Sunday morning, but God’s kindness can still shine through our efforts to be present with one another. Sometimes the effort is of our own making, hugging a friend and confessing “I’m here by the grace of God,” and her reciprocating hug with the words: “Me too, friend.” Sometimes the effort is graced with a name badge and availability at a certain part of the service. Or, it’s posing the question in the lobby, “How are you, really?” in case someone needs to unburden themselves. Sometimes, like the man at the tea-and-hot-water counter, we make an effort to see a beloved saint as God does, listening beneath their spoken words, and telling them what we know, in a Spirit-led way, of God’s goodness.
In my church, I’m fortunate to walk away from Sunday service many weeks feeling seen, known, and loved. But there are many people (in all our churches) who walk into church with the despair of my friend with the flat tire on a busy freeway, and they don’t walk away knowing, by means of the people of God, that God sees them. These beloved saints may be at the coffee counter, stirring cream into their cups. They’re putting name tag stickers on their children’s shirts before sending them into Sunday school. They’re even serving—as greeters or worship team members or children’s teachers. It is the loneliest thing in the world to be among the people of God and not know you are known.
Consider this a Wednesday PSA. I’ll leave you with a challenge, a rarity from me. Sunday is coming: will you keep your body and spirit open in the church lobby, in the child drop-off line, at the coffee counter, in the parking lot? Look, listen, and pray to the God who sees that he will help you see those in need of encouragement on the side of the road.
*Thanks, Renee Griffith Grantham, for sharing your story!
Thanks for reading! I’m a book-obsessed pastor, podcaster, author, and holistic life and leadership coach. For essays and podcasts that come straight to your inbox, subscribe to this Dear Exiles newsletter in the subscription box above. Fun fact: I’m also the author of Dear Boy:, An Epistolary Memoir and the host of the Your Pastor Reads Books podcast.