What if we break into each other and we're not okay?

And we desperately want to be. For our friends.  For our family.

But we've fallen from grace.

What if we try to repair everything in us that's cracked and its just falling apart just as fast as we try to put it all back together?


And what if we feel abandoned by someone important to us as if all that we were was too tough to deal with?

What if we're the prodigal son, but we just haven't reached the part where we're coming home?  And we're worried that's really just a story about some guy who had a really great Father.  Do our friends and family really accept us when we tell the truth about how fallen we really are?  Do they welcome us back?

What if we REALLY screwed up?

Then what?

Then, I say, "It's okay."

You don't have to have it all together.  In fact, you can fall hard.

Grace.

Mercy.

Hard words to swallow on either side if we're honest.

Because on one side of it, we don't want to accept grace and mercy for ourselves

And on the other side of it, we can barely hand out grace and mercy the way it's meant to be handed out.

I'm as guilty as the rest of standing on the sidelines being the judger when I really want to be the one who slips my arm under the weakness of the broken.

I'm guilty of not wanting to let mercy in.  I think I'm too much for it until it slowly cracks at me and warms my heart. 

When it comes down to it, I'm as mixed up about grace and mercy as the rest of us.

It's the hardest to get right.

And I'll struggle with it -up and down- throughout life.

When I see the people I care about most struggling sometimes I don't have the faintest idea how to walk with them through the struggle.  I'll be honest.  Sometimes I just want them to snap out of it.

I just don't get it.

Their step is laden- frankly caked with mud- and here I am skipping through the fields like I own the world.

How do you slow that joy filled pace and go deep?  How do you stop just a little longer to listen to the heart of someone who's broken up over life?  How do you be a friend just to be a friend?  No agenda.

These- the questions that pound on me at night- and I strive for in the light.

When my mind is right and my heart is right (it takes work to get there) I think about being present with those who are hurting.  If I am strong enough- and often I am not- I can sit with the ones who are breaking and just listen.

If possible and circumstance permits, I want to walk with those who stagger through the Valley's.  Even if their morals don't align with mine and we end up staring each other in the face too long being baffled by the other's view, there's merit to being there.  What does love and mercy look like then?

In life, I'm going to fall too.  Do things I don't like.  Sit long in sorrow.

And I'd like- perhaps- to see some old weathered friends who get it.

They really get it.  The mercy and grace stuff.

And they say, "It's okay."

 Carry on.

Because at the end of the day, when my prodigal son's come home- weathered and beaten and ruined- I want to be the one who has the strength to say, "It's okay" as they are welcomed 'home' to me with open arms.