I was going to write tonight about my time in the desert. Overland Park, Kansas, to be exact. But I’ll leave that for another day.
Because I had a conversation today that made me think about something else entirely. What friendship is supposed to look like. What beloved community actually is. And more importantly, how we intentionally build it. Or destroy it.
I heard someone on a podcast say you can tell how much a person loves themselves by the partner they choose.
I felt personally attacked. Because it was kind of accurate.
And I think this applies to friendships too.
Because let’s be honest. Would you voluntarily surround yourself with people who constantly make you feel like you’re the problem? Who subtly, or not-so-subtly, remind you of your flaws? Who project their unresolved chaos onto you like you’re an emotional support stuffy from IKEA?
And yet… many of us do.
I don’t. Or at least, I try not to. I’ve spent enough of my life fighting to exist as myself to know I cannot build intimacy with people who are hiding. Who are sneaking. Who are not honest about who they are.
But romantic relationships? I have chosen differently from my friendships.
Sometimes I tolerated relationships that slowly eroded me because they were familiar. Because they loved me. Because it was easy in the beginning, until it wasn’t. Because we confuse history with safety.
Because of the sunk cost fallacy of the heart.
Or because we don’t fully love ourselves yet, and we accept the version of ourselves reflected back to us as truth.
There’s a sociological theory called the Looking-Glass Self, coined by Charles Cooley. It says we form our identity based on how we believe others see us.
Which explains a lot.
I grew up a lesbian in the 90s. Before rainbow logos became corporate branding strategies. Before Pride had sponsors and merch tents. I’ve had strangers publicly call me disgusting. Immoral. Broken. I remember lying awake at night wondering if they were right. Wondering if there was something fundamentally wrong with me.
Which is disorienting when all you were trying to do is exist and help people see each other’s humanity. Through the work I chose. Through advocating for equal marriage. For speaking up for immigrant communities. For creating policies to stop bullying kids because they were different.
Apparently, that made me a radical snowflake sinner.
But when enough people tell you you’re the problem, it doesn’t just stay in your head. It settles into your nervous system.
Therapy helps. Time helps. Developing a strong sense of self helps, even if other people misinterpret it as ego or narcissism. Because sometimes confidence is just what survival looks like after years of being told you shouldn’t exist.
And that’s where relationships get complicated.
Because conflict between people is rarely about the surface issue. It’s about identity. About whether we feel seen as good, worthy, and valued. Or reduced to our worst moments.
When someone we love says something that hurts us, the instinct isn’t always curiosity.
It’s defense. Retaliation. Emotional scorched earth.
Not because we want to destroy them (some may be actually trying to destroy you).
Because most of the time we’re trying to protect ourselves.
It’s the difference between saying,
“What you said hurt me. Can we talk about it?”
And saying,
“Oh yeah? Here’s a comprehensive list of everything you’ve done wrong since 2020.”
Which, admittedly, is tempting.
But beloved community doesn’t survive on scorekeeping.
It survives on repair.
On witness. On understanding.
On choosing people who can hold your complexity without turning it into ammunition. On being brave enough to hold theirs too. On having hard conversations instead of quietly drifting into resentment while still liking each other’s Instagram posts like everything is fine.
Because here’s the truth I’ve learned the hard way:
Some people love you, but they don’t actually like you.
Some people like you, but they don’t know how to love you.
And some rare people do both.
Those are the ones who stay. Hold on to those people.
Lent asks us to examine not just our individual hearts, but the communities we are building around us.
Who reflects your worth back to you?
Who distorts it?
Who makes you feel more like yourself after you leave, instead of less?
Beloved community isn’t accidental.
It’s chosen.
Over and over again.
Sometimes awkwardly. Sometimes imperfectly. Sometimes after uncomfortable conversations and mutual humility and maybe over a meal, because everyone is emotionally fragile and hungry.
Like all relationships, romantic or platonic, you want to surround yourself with people who help you become a better version of yourself. People who see the good in you and don’t keep score of your worst moments, but witness your effort. People who choose to grow alongside you instead of standing still and resenting your movement.
That is how we build holy, beloved community.
As above, so below.
Lenten Reflection:
“Two are better than one… If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.” – Ecclesiastes 4:9–10
Scripture doesn’t pretend we are self-sufficient. It assumes we will fall. The only question is who will be there when we do.
Because falling is inevitable. Illness. Grief. Breakups. Losing yourself. Reinventing yourself. The long middle where you don’t recognize who you are yet and neither does anyone else.
Beloved community isn’t the people who only knew you when you were strong.
It’s the people who stayed when you were disoriented.
When you were quiet.
When you had nothing impressive to offer.
And it’s also the people who let you show up for them when it was their turn to fall.
Not fixing.
Not rescuing.
Just refusing to disappear on each other.
Jesus didn’t build community around perfection. He built it around proximity. Around people who misunderstood him. People who doubted him. People who failed him. And still, he kept choosing connection.
Because beloved community isn’t proven by how people treat you when you’re thriving.
It’s revealed by who remains when you’re not.
Take care of yourself.
Take care of each other.
Updated: Mar 1
One of the hardest things about starting over is that people remember you for who you were.
They remember the capable version. The confident version. The strong version. They don’t always know what to do with the version of you that is lost. Quiet. Uncertain. Unrecognizable.
And sometimes, neither do you.
When I left everything familiar and went to Kansas City, I wasn’t becoming something new yet. I was deprogramming myself from the life I had built. Untangling my worth from my usefulness. Learning how to exist without constantly proving my value.
I became a shell.
In nature, the caterpillar doesn’t just grow wings. Inside the chrysalis, it dissolves. Its body breaks down into cellular soup before reorganizing into something else entirely. It is soft. Vulnerable. Unformed. A little grotesque.
That was me.
Some friends showed up. They stayed. They didn’t demand timelines or explanations. They loved me without requiring evidence that I was “better” yet.
But not everyone could tolerate the in-between.
People say they support your healing, but what they often mean is they support the version of your healing that still looks productive. I was studying for the LSAT. Working at a coffee shop. Applying to law school. Rebuilding a future from scratch. And even then, it didn’t always feel like enough for the people watching.
Because when you stop performing the version of yourself people depended on, it unsettles them.
Most people don’t believe people actually change.
But change happens slowly.
And then suddenly.
Like a trash panda crawling out of a dumpster fire. Burned. Disoriented. Alive anyway.
I am still emerging. Chrysalis or dumpster fire. Choose your own adventure. Jesus jerk the wheel!!
Lenten Reflection · The Wilderness
Scripture tells us Jesus was led into the wilderness for forty days.
Not to perform miracles.
Not to help anyone.
Not to prove anything.
Just to be alone.
To be tempted.
To be emptied.
To confront himself without the expectations of anyone else.
The wilderness was not a failure of faith.
It was part of the formation.
You don’t emerge from the wilderness recognizable.
You emerge honest.
Lent is not about pretending you’re whole.
It’s about admitting where you dissolved.
Because resurrection doesn’t happen to the version of you that existed before.
It happens to the one who survived becoming unrecognizable.
Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.
I’ve been thinking about how imperfect I am.
Not in an abstract, existential way. In a real way. The kind where you replay conversations. The kind where you know you could have been kinder. Braver. More honest. The kind where you recognize that sometimes you really suck at life.
After my mother died, I fell into a trough of despair that lasted for years.
On paper, I was doing everything right. I had spent my entire professional career working in nonprofits. I was the person people called when they didn’t know where to go. I knew the resources. The systems. The people. I was a bridge between communities and the agencies meant to help them.
I was useful.
And I hated it.
I hated what my life had become. I hated that my worth had quietly fused itself to what I could produce, offer, fix, or carry for others. Nonprofit culture has this unspoken expectation that love for the work should compensate for poverty wages. That sacrifice is proof of commitment. That burnout is a badge of honor.
But I still had rent to pay. I still needed to eat. I still had a life to live.
Working for a nonprofit did not mean I took a vow of poverty.
And the longer I stayed, the more I realized something I didn’t want to admit. Sometimes we weren’t fixing the system, we were helping it continue. Filling gaps that should never have existed. Softening the consequences of political neglect and poor policy choices, so the people responsible never have to feel it.
We were asking exhausted communities to save themselves.
I was exhausted too. I was so, so very tired.
I had built an identity around being the strong one. The capable one. The helper. And somewhere along the way, I disappeared inside that role.
So I left.
I walked away from the life I had spent over a decade building and ran south with nothing but the quiet hope that I might still find myself.
That’s where I began to understand something Psalm 103 says plainly: “He remembers that we are dust.”
Dust is not failure.
Dust is origin.
Dust is what we are made of. Fragile. Temporary. Human.
We are constantly trying to make the best decisions we can with incomplete information. Most of our wisdom comes from misfortune. Either our own or someone else’s. Pain becomes the teacher we never asked for.
We are fallible because we are human. Not the other way around.
People love giving advice. Entire industries exist to tell you how to live your life. But the truth is simpler and harder at the same time. You are the only person who wakes up with yourself every morning and falls asleep with yourself every night.
You are the one who has to live with your choices.
Good choices. Bad choices. Indifferent choices.
You carry them in your body.
And yet, every morning, you are given another chance to decide again. To live another day. Good. Bad. Or indifferent.
That’s the miracle.
Not perfection.
Continuation.
Lenten Reflection:
"...for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust."
Psalm 103:14 reminds us that God does not treat us as our failures deserve. That compassion, not punishment, is the foundation. That we are not loved because we are useful. We are loved because we exist. Our value is in our humanness.
I had spent years believing my usefulness was my worth.
I was wrong.
You don’t need to be flawless to be worthy of love. You don’t need to have everything figured out to be moving in the right direction. You just need to keep choosing with as much honesty as you can.
With love.
With patience.
With kindness.
With grace.
With humor.
Especially toward yourself.
Because shame does not transform people.
Compassion does.
And most of us are doing the best we can with the version of ourselves we have today.
Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.