Thinking a lot lately about Alex and Eliza's dynamic. Eliza just wanted to be a family. She wanted HIM: his presence, attention, love. "Let me be a part of the narrative," she pleads. "Let this moment be the first chapter where you decide to stayyyyyyyyyy." /1 https://twitter.com/LucyCrabKC/status/1387950561086083076

That would have been enough for her.

But it wasn't for him. He had too lofty a view of himself, his ideas and ideals, his passion for the country to be made the way he thought was best.

So he emotionally left her to pursue what he thought were these greater goals /2

Eliza keeps trying. "Take a break," she pleads. He will not, and sets himself on a course that deeply wounds his marriage, wrecks his career, and ultimately costs him his life.

Eliza's forgiveness is costly, a grace too powerful to name. /3

Anyway, I think about this dynamic a lot re: church today. We're all struggling there, aren't we? "Church is hard," we whisper wearily to each other, battered by politics, protests, and pandemic. We let our ideals overshadow the reality of the love we once had for each other. /4

How do we make our way back to each other? Put ourselves back in each other's narratives? Is it justice to leave? Mercy to stay? Humility to forgive.

Forgiveness. CAN you imagine? /5

Forgiveness will be costly, both in the asking for it and the giving of it. The grace it requires IS too powerful to name. Maybe that's why we push it away. We don't understand it. /6

The moment we're in as a people of God, in this particular country and culture, feels like we're in deep and the words are out of reach. "How do we go forward here?" is a question I ask myself, and God, regularly. /7

I cannot shake the uncomfortable notion that He will ask us to do the unimaginable: forgive. That He IS, quietly and firmly and compassionately.

I don't pretend to know all the challenges we're facing. There really is no replacing what we've lost, and we'll all need time. /8

But we don't need to fear forgiving, because we know whom we have believed. The hardest thing right now, for some of us, might be to stay when we'd rather leave. It won't fix everything. We will not recover our losses overnight.

But maybe, just for today, that's enough.

9/9