How did I get here?

15 Years.

15 years have come and gone

and next week I'll turn 30

and this moment in time will split my life straight down the middle -

15 years before, 15 years after.

Someone asked me the other day, in light of turning 30,

if this is where I thought I'd be in life at this age?

The answer that I could not share in the passing of 'polite conversation' is no.

No ma'am, because I didn't think I'd live past 18, so all these years have been an added bonus.

When I was little I used to play that silly game MASH, do you remember that?

According to that 2 dimensional little game, I should've been married at 20, had 5 kids before I turned 25, drive a convertible and live in a mansion.

That was the dream - the 'American Dream.'

It didn't take long for me to set childish games aside

and become entirely disillusioned by the world;

it feels as though I've lived many lives since then.

15 years ago today a friend of mine, Adrian Keller took his own life.

I've spoken about this often and I know our culture can't handle grief,

so yes I hear all the mumbling voices wondering why I can't just let it go,

but here's why: because I don't want to.

This moment in my life was a turning point.

There were many things that happened before Adrian's death

and manyyyy more things after his death that had huge impacts on my life,

but none quite the same.

It was Adrian's death that taught me to take people seriously,

to forgive and make up before it's too late,

and most importantly, he taught me what it was like to be 'left behind.'

Adrian and I spent the summer commiserating;

sharing our grief over the death of our friend Seth

and expressing our deep disenchantment with the world that made us depressed,

so much so that we didn't want to be alive.

The hard truth is, if Adrian wouldn't have taken his life,

if I hadn't experienced what it felt like to be left behind,

to be the one living with the loss of a loved one to suicide,

racked with guilt, questions and a million 'what ifs,'

I would have taken my life when I was in high school.

Now don't come at me with the 'everything happens for a reason,'

'he died so you could live,'

or 'he died so you could learn and do good things in the world' bullshit -

I don't buy into any of those beliefs

and would gladly give up any good thing that's come out of my life to go back

and beg him to stay.

I didn't want any of this.

Nevertheless, here I am..

Trying to make sense out of a messy, broken world and life, because that's what we do.

We make meaning and purpose and we try to do better every single day.

For me, this is a daily balancing act -

I know deep in my bones the sacredness of life and this fuels my passion for building a world where no one suffers so badly that they want to escape..

While on the other hand, my soul is weary with hopelessness as I stare down the mountain of layers of systemic oppression and exploitation that need to be toppled in order to stop crushing people and the planet...

So am I where I thought I'd be?

Absolutely not.

Never did I ever think I'd be turning 30,

let alone: 30, divorced, ordained as a pastor,

living in Nashville and working on my second masters degree!

How did I get here?

Well, in large part, by choosing to honor Adrian's life

and vowing to help kids like us find hope and healing.

So no, I don't want to let it go.

I want to keep remembering.

I want to stay rooted in the sacred cloud of witnesses that have come and gone from my life,

changing me forever by their existence.

I want to remember that my life also has such an impact on everyone I meet.

Because of Adrian, my childhood experiences, and the others I lost along the way -

I am who I am.

I have not had the worst life by any stretch of the imagination -

MANY have it far worse that I -

yet my life has led me to engage with the world from a 'bottom-up' perspective.

Deep solidarity with the suffering is not a space I chose on purpose,

but it is the only space I know.

By the time I went off to college I wanted to be a 'Christian Counselor,'

because it was in my suffering that I met God

and all I wanted to do with my life was help others who wanted to die find reasons to stay.

How did I get from counseling to anticapitalist community building!?

I guess you could say education is liberation..

As I studied religion and psychology, I began the process of digging deeper and deeper -

always asking these two questions:

Why does suffering even exist?

& What is the root of suffering?

The deeper I dug, the wider my view became -

I went from wanting to help individuals,

to wanting to get to the root of their issues so they didn't need my help;

following Archbishop Desmond Tutu's teaching:

"There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river.

We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in."

This led me to move from charity to

advocacy and organizing for communal & creation healing -->

which opened my eyes to systemic injustices of all kinds

and a desire to help reshape the government -->

which (unfortunately) opened my eyes to 'global neoliberal capitalism' ->

which is a very fancy way of saying:

there are a handful of EXTREMELY wealthy individuals and corporations

with more power than nations/governments

who are making decisions for the rest of the world that lead to mass sufferings like:

climate disaster, poverty, displacement, & lack of food,

water, shelter, healthcare, education & most importantly: dignity, power & agency.

My K-12 education certainly never mentioned this..

only that in 1492 Columbus, a really great guy from Spain, sailed the ocean blue, found this land and BAM - the greatest civilization ever know came to life!

In the land of opportunity and FREEDOM, how could anyone be depressed!?

HA!

[there is a lot to unpack there.. but that's for another day]

The jig is up; the pandemic and the last few years have opened the eyes of too many people

for us to 'go back to normal,'

pretending as though we didn't see anyyyything..

Now that the dust has settled and the man behind the curtain has been revealed,

I've been asking myself,

Where do we go from here?

We're in a pivotal moment in history where we should all be asking collectively:

Where do we go from here?!

Now is our time to imagine a new world and to get to work building it -

a world where no one works full time and still can't pay their bills;

where no one gets sick and can't afford treatment;

where no one knows what it's like to be homeless, hungry, thirsty, enslaved, or ostracized;

a world that makes space for all people AND all creation -

honoring the Earth as a part of the larger whole.

Can you imagine a world where you don't have to be a pawn in someone else's game?

Where you have agency and worth, not because of your net market value,

but because you're a human being?

I could go on and on..

I'm not saying I know how to make this happen..

I'm just saying there ARE other possibilities.

We don't HAVE to live like this -

and I'm happy to spend the next 30+ years working toward that dream.

Because it gives me hope.

Because it honors Adrain and all those sacred lives I've loved and lost.

Because I worship a God who literally came to earth to bring good news to the poor, liberate the captives, recover sight to the blind, free the oppressed and proclaim the year of jubilee/Lord's favor (Luke 4:18).

I didn't imagine this is where I'd find myself

but I'm happy to be here.

and that's not something I'm used to saying.

<3