Showing Up

Reflecting on Kacie's blog post "Just Show Up" last week, how often in your life do you remember just showing up and that just showing up made a difference for you or someone else whether it was going to church or some other event in your life?

Kacie's blog post resonated with me because so often as a parent especially when everything we need to get going seems like so much effort; someone wakes up grumpy; someone is sick; or I only got an hour or two of sleep; or a combination of it all. Often, the choice to show up anywhere seems pretty clear, "not today," despite my best intentions of wanting to be there. There are many Sundays we don't make it to church because of one of the above reasons and it seems like it is just too challenging to deal with or we are already running late that day. Then there are some Sundays when the above reasons seem like a convenient excuse but I feel compelled to get in the car and go even if that means we are running late.

At our mom group on Saturday, we had one mom show up with her almost five-year-old and her one-and-a-half in tow. She apologized profusely for showing up late and commented that they were in the survival season of life as we showed her the nursery. I told her, yes, that is exactly where we are at too, and that this is why we started the group. I wanted to hug her and thank her for just showing up because I was so glad someone did. I was also impressed that she got her kids out on a rainy Saturday to attend our group. I introduced myself and she asked what I did and I told her I was the secretary. She wanted to know more about St. Paul's and the people here. I know I often talk about how blessed I feel to be working here and I proceeded to tell her how wonderful the people are, but I also realized it is hard to describe just how welcoming and loving a congregation we have here is.

What I didn't do was describe all the times when I deeply needed the fellowship and how just showing up to church made a difference because of the various connections I have made here. In particular, I remember getting some really hard, stressful news a couple of months ago. Going to church that Sunday was the last thing I wanted to do, but I knew it was what I needed to do to move forward. We got here about 20 minutes late, and all three of us had woken up in bad moods, but somehow coming through the doors being greeted by familiar faces, having friends to sit with, older kids that make my kids feel seen or like family,  made a difference and was exactly what we needed that day.

So thank you Kacie for your article, for your kiddos that make my kids feel welcome and seen, and everyone here for reminding me that sometimes just showing up is intentional and makes a huge difference.