Meeting God in a Meeting

Shalom: The Hebrew word meaning Peace, Harmony, Wholeness, and Prosperity…

The opposite of what the world seems to be feeling in the midst of this COVID-19 crisis. I woke up this morning, like I have every morning for the last week, since our Bishop emailed encouraging us to suspend public worship for two weeks, with a knot the size of a softball in the pit of my stomach. A knot that twisted up inside of me because of the overnight uncertainty this virus has brought into my life. A knot that gets heavier by the day as the needs of the world continue to grow at lightning speed. A knot that is loaded with questions about the future. What about Easter celebrations? How is my sister who is a college junior going to finish her studio art assignments online? What about the elderly in my church who can’t access online modes of worship? What is going to happen to our economy and those currently losing jobs? How are students going to continue to receive a proper education? What if my precious dog Bentley catches the virus from me? The list could go on and on.

It wasn’t until about a week into this new social chaos that I was hit with the full reality of this “new normal”. And it is scary. I soon realized that the knot in my stomach was one of fear. And not just fear, but capital F E A R! In the days following our nations’ request to social distance due to COVID-19 the fear that gripped my gut held so tight it made navigating the future almost impossible. It wasn’t until a wise friend reminded me of a fact of fear that I regained my balance. Found my center again. Moved through this new life with the slightest ease. She reminded me that “we are afraid of what we can’t control and that fear steals our power”

With that one phrase I began to see my behavior for what it was. The short tempered, quick responses, and sleepless nights were a result of fear that surrounded lack of control. That fear quickly stole my power! As the reality of THAT sunk in, as quick as if I prayed, God please take this fear another wise friend offered this phrase… “Be at peace”.

Be at peace, the opposite of fear. Peace gives the power of serenity while fear steals it. Peace provides a foundation while fear shatters it. Shalom offers a feeling of wholeness and completeness while fear prevents that connectedness. As my friend offered me that peace, Shalom, she reminded me that when I accept peace I am rejecting fear. In the midst of this new normal where almost all control has disappeared, we still have the choice to welcome peace instead of fear.

Though I’ve offered “the peace of Christ” in church all my life, I’ve never quite clung to it as I have over the last few days. Today, March 19, 2020 I have control over offering Christ’s peace to a hurting and fearful world. Signs of peace that extend deeper and wider than only what I can do for me, into what we can do for one another. Namaste…Peace…Shalom…however you choose to accept it and offer it is up to you, but today I am choosing to not be held by that knot in my stomach but to be freed by the peace that carries us when we can’t carry ourselves.

God grant me the Serenity…

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference”A short, sweet, simple prayer that I’ve heard almost all my life, but never really saw the value in it because I didn’t really understand the need for serenity and I didn’t really understand why I would pray for courage to change things or wisdom to know the difference between what I could change or could not change. Long story short, it has taken me 27 years (two of which being in full time ministry) to realize that there’s so dang much in this life that I cannot change and my need for serenity, on a scale of one to 10, on any given day is a 25.

In the life of the church there are lots of things I cannot control. People’s reactions to my actions. The way people think about me in general. People showing up to events I help lead and plan. The fact that a committee made and voted on a decision. The fact that my dog ate a perfectly good cake that I homemade for a church event 3 hours before I had to take it to that event. People who not only feel like they are dying but they acknowledge that out loud, while they hold my hand. I can’t control that people die and I have to preside over their funeral. I can’t control that people will fall ill or have surgery while I’m on vacation or during my day off. I can’t control that my closest friends and family who knew me before I was a preacher won’t really understand how draining a “bad day” is. I can’t even control the carefully planned out schedule I have made for my week because I am a slave to my cell phone. There’s a lot I can’t control in this life called ministry. God grant me the serenity…

I’ve also learned, during my time in the recovery world, that there’s a lot I can’t control there either. I can’t control if an alcoholic takes a drink after being sober a year or two or 20. I can’t control the loss of emotional sobriety. Nor can I control someone else’s work they put into maintaining that emotional sobriety. I can’t control how many meetings that my friends who are in recovery make (or don’t make). The bottom line of what I have learned in the last 6 months is that I, Caitlin/United Methodist Pastor/Recovery Ally cannot keep anyone sober/sane/on the Recovery train. There’s a lot I can’t control in the realm of Recovery. God grant me the serenity…

I say all the things that I cannot control, because it’s the loss of control lately that has made me realize the importance of serenity. The importance of praying for God to grant me serenity because without it I have realized how crazy my mind can go. In a meeting this week I heard it said by someone that once they not only realized that they could not save themselves, BUT WERE ALSO WILLING to turn their lives over to a Power higher than themselves, were they really restored to sanity. I got a little taste of what a dire need to be restored to sanity felt like. It didn’t really hit me that I neededserenity, and by need I mean without something changing the chances of me doing something crazy were really high, until one day I woke up and realized that the life I was living and the life I preached about didn’t seem to coincide…and in case you didn’t pick up on it, that’s a scary place to be in as a preacher.

When I began attending 12 step meetings and learned the Serenity Prayer that was said at the beginning of every meeting I didn’t quite grasp it’s magnitude or importance of it until I really listened to the words I prayed. God Grant me the Serenity ,begins with us, a Christian clean and sober church goer and an alcoholic in denial that God loves them who hasn’t been to church in years, to acknowledge that we pray for serenity to a God that CAN grant it. Those 5 words are enough to carry us through the hard stuff in life, but what I soon realized is that the power part of this prayer is yet to come. To accept the things I cannot change, acknowledges that there are things in this life that we cannot change and those things will take our serenity. In losing that serenity we lose the beautiful things that make us us. To be able to pray to a God that loves us and ask that God to grant us serenity as well as acceptance of the things we have no power to change is not only monumental but it is life changing. It frees the brain space in our heads that is normally filled with worry over things that are out of our control to be filled with the things we do have power over. Leading us to the rest of the prayer. The courage to change the things we can.That’s where the Gospel comes in. Jesus empowered his disciples to take what they knew, what they learned, what they felt, and use that to change the world in ways they could. The Gospel is transformative and has the potential to be lived out in ways that can change the world through changing ourselves.

The transformative nature of a 12 step program is what has inspired me lately. Not just as a preacher, but as a person who has come to love people in recovery in such a way that is almost inexplicable. Through praying these words of the Serenity Prayer while holding the hands of people who know pain in such an intimate way, I have learned that we aren’t all that different from one another in our longing for and need of God in a way that transforms our lives. To allow that transformation to take place, now that’s the hard part (or the fun part depending on how you look at it).

Just a little grace and a lot of (holy) mystery

After a full week of ministry that concluded with a trip to Asheville for the equivalent of a “hippie preacher festival” known as Wild Goose, I officially ended my week with a visit to my favorite smoke-filled setting. A 12 step meeting. I had told a friend of mine I’d come to help her celebrate a sobriety birthday but after being in the fellowship for an hour’s worth of meeting I realized I needed to be there.

By “need” I mean my soul needed what those 12 steps offered. The experience a family member shared of her life living with an alcoholic, the hope that she found in meetings, and the grace God extended throughout that entire process. My soul needed to be reminded that I am not alone in this journey called ministry. Though I never expected to find myself a “regular” in 12 step meetings when I didn’t suffer from the disease of addiction, in those places among those people I found friendships I now can’t imagine my life without. By the grace of God these friendships appeared in my life when I needed them most.

My sweet friend, who picked up 10 years of sobriety, so eloquently phrased it that it was for the grace of God and the people who came before that paved the way for this new life they all were now fully able to enjoy. I don’t think I had ever thought about that before. “But for the grace of God”. We Methodists talk a whole lot about grace. The grace we receive before we ask for it, the grace that reaches out like a hand to walk us through the door into a lifetime of grace along our journeys. I have, especially after my ordination interviews, prided myself in understanding the concept of grace to a T. I could talk about it and wrap it up into a nice neat box to be passed along to any congregation member struggling to understand the concept.

But it’s when we think we got it that God often walks with us right up to some muddied water and waits for us to look up instead of trudge through the mud on our own. Tonight I was reminded of just what that grace has brought me. The grace of God brought me friendships that have forever shaped my life. God knew this life He called me to. God knew just how I was going to live into this life called ministry. And most importantly God knew that since I only know one speed (110 miles an hour 24/7) that one speed was going to translate into my professional life as well. God knew the love I would pour into his work and God knew the curbs I would trip off of (both metaphorically and literally…that’s a story for another day) and in grace God gave me soul friends that would take care of me when I was too busy for that job.

In the 12 step rooms you hear the phrase “God does for us what we can’t do for ourselves” and that’s exactly what God did for me in this phase of my ministry life. God gave me grace-filled, humble and courageous people, who for whatever reason continue to keep me around, that are willing to hold onto me so that the work of this life won’t swallow me up before I reach 30. As I met these people and I learned about their program and I became part of their lives and they mine, all I have wondered is how to translate the love and support and forgiveness and encouragement and affirmation and continual acceptance and accountability they constantly offer into the life of the Church and it finally hit me today. The church is where we gather if we are willing to let a little holy mystery do for us what we can’t do for ourselves.

The holy mystery we so often feel the need to explain that we forget its mysterious-ness (yes I made that word up and I’m gonna own it). The grace and the mystery working together make the church come alive, we humans just need to be willing to let it do its thing and work. All those things I named earlier that I’ve found in 12 step meetings, of course I want those to exist in the church, but what I’ve been hit with today is not that this way of church doesn’t already exists, but rather we just need to be willing to let the Holy work in new and radical ways. Shaking up the familiar and pushing us to the edge of comfortable so that we can meet people we never thought we would meet and form relationships that could forever shape our lives. With God’s grace my concept of what I knew and loved about church has been expanded and for that, both professionally and personally, I am grateful beyond words. My hope for today is that with the grace of God I can continually accept the holy mystery as the gift it always is and never stop growing in the garden God planted me in.

Something about the night sky just screamed “holy mystery”

God of the Valley(s)

Sometimes ministry is just hard. There’s no other way to tactfully put it than to say that this life God has called me to is full of hills and valleys and hiking those make for a tired Spirit sometimes. As I have always reminded my church members and friends when they are in the midst of one of the valleys of life that, God never gives us more than we can handle. Well this girl needed that reminder today. It is funny (or ironic or coincidental or however else you want to see it) how God works just when we need Him most. Just when our spirits feel like they can’t carry our tired and wounded bodies out of another valley, God does something that lifts us just enough so that we are able to keep moving.

In the span of 24 hours, God placed people in my path, each with a specific message that I needed to hear. Their words were kind and compassionate. Loving and encouraging. Wise and affirming. And their words were the salve for my soul. I could not be more grateful for their presence, their witness, and their love, not only for me, but most importantly for God. While my day started with a feeling of dread, as the afternoon wore on I felt God’s Spirit through the people He placed around me. So when the choice came for me to eat dinner alone, or share in a meal with my friends in recovery and then attend a meeting…I chose the latter.

I thought I had experienced plenty God moments already for one day. So I walked into that 12 step meeting with no expectation for God to speak to me because He had shown himself enough to me today…I thought. But as we opened the book to the page we were reading the first person read a phrase that I know was meant just for me today.

In talking about a solution to the common problem of addiction the text spoke about the fellowship that exists among those who share this commonality.

“We are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of its occupations are represented, as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful” pg. 17 of Alcoholics Anonymous

“We are people who normally would not mix”. I can’t say that I haven’t thought this very thing every time I entered the room of a 12 step program. I’ve wondered how many of these people would be friends outside this room? How many of them would even know the person beside them existed had they not met them in this program? How many of these people, who have lived in this town their whole lives, would never have met the person they now call their best friend had it not been for these rooms? This phrase wrapped up this thought more clearly than I have been able to since the beginning of my time here. “But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful” But , one word that wipes away all the differences, all of the labels that separate people, all of the preconceived notions that keep people apart, so that among them there can be a fellowship, a friendliness, an understanding that unites them all together.

As I heard this paragraph read tonight I couldn’t help but think of this fellowship that is steeped in love and understanding and acceptance and how that translates into the life of the church. What if we, as church goers, thought about our church community as a fellowship filled with friendliness and understanding? Filled with people that would not normally mix. People of different political opinions, of different ethnic backgrounds, of different occupations, of different convictions. Because let’s face it. The church is filled with people that under any other circumstances would not normally mix. But above all else we were people united by the “indescribably wonderful” nature of a fellowship that loved without ceasing. That welcomed without question. That extended friendliness before anything else. What if…

If I’m honest, this sounds like the kind of church Jesus called me to…

Maybe that’s a naive thought to have, but even on the hardest days that ministry offers I can’t lose faith that this world, filled with people that don’t mix, can come together in fellowship. Not that they always do, but they can because God created us for community. Not community that is filled with clones of ourselves, but community. Period.

As the meeting came to a close the last paragraph talked about what recovery takes…

“Willingness, honesty, and open mindedness are the essentials of recovery. But these are indispensable.” pg. 568 of Alcoholics Anonymous

I’d go so far as to say that life, as well as recovery, require the same. We have to be willing, honest, and open minded if we are even going to attempt to become the better people God created us to be. Now I’m not saying I am any of those things all the time, or even part of the time, but I am saying that God used a 12 step program today to remind me of those things so that maybe I can be a better servant tomorrow. God is a God of the hills and the valleys (as the song goes) and even though my spirit is weary in the valleys, God’s spirit is constant. And present. And loving. God doesn’t leave us in the valley, He puts the people and the places in our paths that we need to push us back up onto a hill. And for that, today, I am so grateful.

Painstakingly…

Painstakingly…. The word used to describe how painful it is to be stuck behind someone driving 35 in a 55 mph zone when I am already 10 minutes late to the yoga class I so desperately want to attend…

Painstakingly…. It is painstakingly obvious, from the amount of questions I ask at a church finance meeting, that I know nothing when it comes to numbers and budgets…

Painstakingly…. The healing process, whether it be physically, mentally, or emotionally is painstakingly slow and tries the patience of everyone around us…

While the above phrases are all instances this week in which I have experienced the word painstaking , I don’t think I actually had the word for what was felt until I sat in on a 12 step meeting this week. During one of the readings at the opening of the meeting someone read the phrase, “if we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through”. Of course this is talking about the journey towards recovery and sobriety and how we have to be deliberate and intentional about “working the program”, but I couldn’t help but focus on the word painstaking.

According to my trusty Google dictionary, the definition of “Painstaking” literally means “employing great care and thoroughness”… In the world of recovery this relates to the work that has to be done in order to maintain sobriety. The hard work that takes an insane amount of through self reflection, through amend making, and deliberate forgiveness that will ultimately lead to and maintain recovery. The phrase read at the beginning of the meeting this week clearly explained that if we are painstaking about “this phase of our development”, if we are thorough and we take great care of exactly where we are at this moment in our journey, “we will be amazed before we are half way through”… Before we are halfway through the hard work, if we are painstaking we will be amazed at the transformation that has already occurred. The difference that has already been made in our lives. The new life we have been given. Amazing the implications that one word makes isn’t it?

I think the reason that the word painstaking struck me so much is that it doesn’t just apply to the world of recovery and sobriety… It doesn’t only apply to those trying desperately to overcome an addiction… The word painstaking applies to all of us. It applies to all of us who drive behind slow drivers when we are in a hurry. It applies to those of us who have to be deliberately and intentionally patient with those who don’t understand things the way they do. It even applies to those of us who are battling bodily or mental illnesses that try to convince us that “we can’t beat it”. In understanding my call as a Christian, I believe it also applies to the relationships I make with people inside and outside my church walls.

If we are painstaking, if we are thorough, if we take great care to do the work, wether it be personal, self reflective work, or “Jesus work” as I like to call it, you know the Gospel call of feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, loving our neighbors, that sort of thing you know, if we are painstaking about that phase of our development we will be amazed at how it affects us… We will be amazed before we are halfway through this journey called life how we will be transformed.

I’ve learned, from all my years of ministerial experience (that would be all of two whole years today!) that “being the church” is lived out through our willingness to be painstakingly genuine and honest and compassionate towards the people and the world God created. I’ve learned that my favorite Gospel call in Matthew 25 to “care for the sick” isn’t solely about visiting hospitals… It’s about listening to stories of addiction and offering hope. Or walking alongside a cancer diagnosis without letting fear guide our thoughts and our prayers.

“Feeding the hungry” isn’t just about serving a meal at a soup kitchen, it is about feeding the Gospel to people hungry for a different way of life. The Galatians call to “love your neighbor as yourself” may just be the hardest…but after this week I can say that I believe we must be painstaking in our love for one another. We must be thorough in loving not for the sake of saying “we love our neighbor” but we must take great care in loving all of God’s children because we will be amazed what that love can do for us in the process.

I started attending these 12 step meetings so that I could learn. So that I could education myself on the recovery side of addiction. But what I have learned is that God has a funny way of showing up in ways I never expected Him too. What I have found in these rooms are people who are painstaking in their journey towards recovery, but they are also painstaking in the work that it takes to be the kind of people God calls all of us to be. They are painstaking about this phase of their development because they know that all they are given is today so today they have to work the hardest they can work to maintain this thing called recovery because it’s by God’s grace they are even here at all.

In the few short months I’ve been in the “rooms” I’ve learned so much about myself, my community, the world of addiction and recovery, but today I am grateful beyond words for the beautiful people who have taught me what it means to be painstaking in this phase of my development, because this phase is what I’m given today. And we all know that we have to stay in today because we make it through this journey “one day at a time”…

“Look around, we are all miracles”

After all of my 27 years, after 7 years of higher education (3 of those years being of the theological variety), and a lifetime of “church goin”, miracles were always the hard thing to wrap my logically motivated mind around. Miracles were the things that happened a long time ago (or didn’t for all we know) and they aren’t relevant in the modern world we now find ourselves in. Though I have read, studied, even told people they exist, the truth of it is, I struggled to believe in miracles. Yes, a little heretical I know. Blame the dark blue school with the national championship winning basketball team…

For me, miracles either came in the form of a burning bush or the parting of the Red Sea with nothing but a stick and poetic words. If I couldn’t command a mountain to move with my faith, then maybe miracles were just some hyperbole that Jesus used to make a point. Maybe they aren’t all that necessary, but rather serve to give us something to aspire to. Until recently, my theological understanding of miracles revolved around what I have/haven’t seen. Once again, I tend to make God all about what I understand…Not quite how God works..

I was reminded tonight, as I sat in yet another 12 step meeting, that miracles don’t all come in the grand, mountain moving, raising from the dead kind of way. They often come in the new life we are given in sobriety. Hearing friends talk about the second chances at living that they were given when they got sober was enough to bring this overly emotional girl to tears. The fact is, as one individual so eloquently put it, “all of us around this table are miracles.”

Everyone who has worked the program truthfully and authentically, is a miracle.

Everyone who wakes up day after day and does not take a drink that they know will kill them, is a miracle.

Everyone who is handed back relationships that they so skillfully broke, is a miracle.

Everyone who reaches their hand out to the next addict to help them find their way into “the rooms”, is a miracle.

The truth of it is, miracles aren’t big, flashy, in your face events. They are the undeserved graces given to us by a Creator who loves us. Loves us enough to offer a second chance at life. Loves us enough to extend a hand into the brokenness of our lives to pull us up into this life He created us for. Miracles in this life come in the form of repaired relationships, years of sobriety, willingness to be cared for by a power greater than ourselves. One line in the opening of the meeting says, “We stood at the turning point and decided to hand over our lives and will to the care of God.”

It is a miracle that broken people found within church walls and within the rooms of 12 step meetings alike, are people loved by a God so much that they are given the opportunity to live this life better than they were taught. We are all miracles, anyone living life in sobriety will tell you that, but what are we doing with this miracle we are given? It is with a grateful heart that we continue to live, my friends in “the rooms” have taught me that, because without this miracle of new life we would be nowhere. Lost. Nothing. And that is not the life we were created for friends. So what are we doing with this “new life”? That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?

When 2 or 3 are gathered…

“When two are together we have a meeting…” a phrase I’ve heard over and over again since I’ve been a frequent visitor of the 12 step “rooms”. A phrase that embodies the entire nature of community that this program thrives on. A phrase that I have come to appreciate because it means that when 2 are gathered the hard work of self reflection, truth telling in love, and connectionalism is happening and THAT is what leads to recovery. Whole body recovery, not some half hearted attempt to just overcome a chemical dependency. Recovery of the mind, body, and spirit. True recovery.

So how does that translate to ministry? How does that influence my role as a small town rural Methodist pastor? Thank you for asking, I’ve been asking myself the same questions these past few weeks.

The honest, open, hard conversations that happen inside the 12 step rooms are ones that I can hopefully dream will one day happen inside the walls of a sanctuary. Or better yet? These are the conversations that will be a necessity if the church is to survive in the world.

Week after week I have been graciously received into meeting after meeting and have been privileged to sit around a table where people can, and do, share their stories in raw and unfiltered ways. They share them from the perspective of “experience, strength, and hope” in hopes of relating to someone in the room who may be facing something similar. In hopes of offering a glimpse into life after experiences into a life filled with hope. These stories are filled with trauma. Filled with grief. Filled with experiences that make this girl’s heart break wide open (I have left more than one meeting ready to mama bear someone into sobriety). All the things we church people like to stay far away from right?

We, as a majority, don’t like to talk about the hard stuff. We let our pride get in the way of our healing. We stuff it all down because that’s how we were taught to handle it. I say “we” because I completely identify with all of the above. As a 27 year old, female, United Methodist pastor, in the south I can say that when given the choice of radical openness and honesty or shoving down the hard stuff, I have often chosen the least healing of the two paths. Haven’t we all?

Ministry and the 12 steps has taught me these last months that though these conversations are hard, and they often make you squirm, what comes out on the other side is beautiful.

What comes out is a community that trusts one another deeply and intentionally. Trust like this is hard to come by y’all. As I’ve found myself sitting in powerful truth telling meetings, I ask myself, “how do we do church in this way? How do we build community around intentionally sharing every piece of your life with those around you? How does the Church be radically open to the point of a 12 step meeting?”

Don’t let me fool ya, I haven’t answered all of these questions for myself or my ministry context, but I have learned that the first step is building relationships with people who do this work well. I am grateful beyond words for the people who have allowed me to hear their stories, sit beside them in a meeting, held my hand as we prayed the Lord’s Prayer. People who allow me to gather alongside them in their journeys of recovery, because I am able to fill my call to “be the church” as I sit by their side. Selfish? Maybe. But they keep telling me to “keep coming back” so gather I will.

Keep coming back…

Pulling into the parking lot was a little intimidating. Walking up to a picnic table filled with people who all knew each other, none of which knew me, was a little more intimidating. But to be completely honest, the scariest thing of all was walking up the stairs and through the heavy wooden door into a room I had only ever imagined in my head. A room I had no experience entering, filled with people who were probably, as I had already convinced myself, going to talk about problems that would make me squirm in my seat (that is if I even made it to a seat before I made up some reason to suddenly bolt and never look back). As I pulled into the parking lot of a 12 step meeting I found myself looking around as if actively preparing myself to fend off any questions to the greater public as to why the local Methodist minister found herself in that parking lot, about to walk into a meeting filled with those people. To my surprise, I got out of my car and walked across the sidewalk, up the stairs, and into the building without one single person giving me the judgmental “I know what you did that landed you here” look that I was fully expecting. In fact, it became really clear really fast that I was just another person walking into the 12 step meeting, just like the woman beside me and the guy behind me. No judgement here.

Before I go any farther, let me just explain how I landed myself in this particular situation. Fresh out of divinity school, with the world as my ministerial oyster, God saw fit to place me within a rural county that tends to have as many drug overdoses as we do corn and hay fields. This southern, Highway patrolman’s daughter, who barely knew the street name for marijuana, in her first ministry appointment, found herself serving as a United Methodist minister to a community who was silently battling addiction both inside and outside the confines of their church walls. Funny how God works sometimes. But as we say in the UMC, where we are sent we will go, and go I did. I just never expected that I would be sent to the midst of a 12 step meeting in the middle of the week in broad daylight right in the midst of our small town. Again, funny how God works.

Upon the invitation by one of my church members, who was new to Methodist life but familiar with “meetings” (12 step meetings that is), I found myself in that parking lot one day around lunch time walking alongside her into “the rooms” like a little duck, not really knowing what I was doing or where I was going, but following nonetheless. I know the minute I walked into that room I looked like a deer in headlights, but I was there to learn all the things about addiction and how it affects those in our community so that I could be a well educated preacher to all the various populations I served. I had all these expectations as to what I was going to learn, and how I would show these people God, and what I was going to say about the ministry that I was doing when I introduced myself… Remember how I said it was funny how God worked? Well, God took this loud-mouthed, never-meet-a-stranger, girl from the south and shut her up real quick. I’m convinced He shut me up so that I could genuinely meet the kind souls that were there to welcome me into their fellowship with open arms, open minds, and open doors (yes I even found a little Methodist mission philosophy in that room). When it came time for me to actually meet people the only words I could muster were, “hello, I’m…”

Funny how you have your own name your whole life but when it comes time to introduce yourself to a room full of strangers you can’t even form the sounds to spit it out. Those 7 years of higher education did this girl a whole lot of good in THAT moment! In the horrendously long moment of silence that followed “I’m” all I could think was, “thanks, Caitlin. You’ve done a great job of showing these people what kind of nut job you really are, you can’t even introduce yourself properly!” In my moments of self criticism and belittling, the people around the table kindly smiled with understanding eyes while another leaned over to me and whispered “your name is Caitlin, remember? Just say that”.

For the 55 minutes that followed my lack of self introduction, I kept my mouth shut and listened to stories filled with experience, strength, and hope. The meeting opened with the chair person asking the question “is anyone having trouble staying sober?”. The moments that followed I will never forget. In response to one person’s confession that they were struggling with sobriety, an entire roomful of people told their stories as a way to offer hope to the hopeless. To offer strength to the tired and the sick. To offer God (or their Higher Power) to someone so desperately seeking something greater. Not only “something greater”, but something that could and would reach down and pull them up by the bootstraps they could no longer find. Any of this sounding a little Gospel like yet? For those 55 minutes I felt the presence of Spirit in such a way that almost cannot be explained.

I entered the meeting a newcomer, an outsider, filled with a little uncertainty, judging myself for a disease that I didn’t even suffer from, and thinking that I was going to offer “these people” something by my ministerial presence. Funny how God works. Those people quickly became some of the most honest, humble, and inclusive people that I have ever met. Those people were willing (in the span of an hour) to teach me more than I could ever teach them. Those people reflected not only their honest brokenness in humility, but they also reflected the image of a Creator that embraces us because of our brokenness.

As the meeting came to a close and we held hands to pray the Lord’s Prayer (who knew I’d be praying the same prayer I pray on Sunday Morning in a 12 step meeting?) I couldn’t keep the tears from slowly rolling down my cheeks. Our Father, who art in Heaven. Hallowed be His name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven… This moment, in this room, filled with these people. This is what the Kingdom on earth looks like friends. God used this moment to remind me how my understanding of ministry was about to change forever.

So if you can stand my long winded reflections on my time in “the rooms” stick around, if not that’s okay. But as they say at the end of every meeting, “Keep coming back, it works if you work it (and it don’t if you don’t)”.