A love letter to the tension dwellers.

Dear you, dear me, dear us standing weary hand in hand together, 

I must confess, I know next to nothing about politics. I am 26 years old, and only registered to vote for the first time this year, so if you want to tune me out, I understand. But I'm not coming to you with political opinions. Instead, I'm coming to you with this heart and these ears and these hands and feet. They're all I've got, and honestly, they're kind of busted up. But the older I get, the more I learn that people don't need opinions or advice. They don't need perfection. What they need is to see the bruises. They need to know that you've seen enough of life and this world to know that the answers aren't always black and white. People need to see you living into the tension.

I almost gave up last week. My social feeds were like a nasty car accident that I couldn't look away from, and I could feel my blood pressure climbing with each new post. I cried when Michelle Obama surprised people who were paying tribute to her on late night TV. I went on and on to my husband about my feelings about our new president and the choices he has made in the last 28 days. The marching and the not marching and the refugees and Planned Parenthood and the how dare you's and name calling. One guy I follow actually had to unfriend his mom on Facebook because she was harassing him and his friends because they had the audacity to express opinions that differed from her own. But I couldn't stop scrolling -- not until I sat straight up in bed at 3 AM after having a nightmare about ISIS and nuclear war.

I was on the fast track to throwing every piece of electronic equipment we own off of our third-floor balcony and spending an entire week in bed surrounded by snotty, tear-drenched tissues. I could feel the panic attacks coming, but I came here instead. To write us a love letter.

I have a lot of friends who are experiencing deeply personal pain -- friends who have watched their babies die, friends whose marriages have crumbled, friends who have siblings in mental hospitals, friends who have lost jobs or received harrowing diagnoses. Those things can feel like too much to survive, without the turmoil we see unfold in our world with each new day. And we're all silently questioning how we're going to wake up and face whatever tomorrow holds. Perhaps we're all wondering a little bit where God is, where the hell it all went so wrong, and how on earth we're going to find the strength to just stay here.

It's okay to ask those questions. We don't have to run from them or pretend they don't exist. It's okay to give names to the strange and terrible things we sometimes feel and think. We can lay it all out on the table without shame and feel free to let the grief wash over us the way that only grief does.

And then.

We can choose to push back when the darkness starts closing in.

We can choose to look back at the countless ways that God has proven himself to be faithful and tell the devil that we've got too much street cred to be worried about the tricks he's turning.

We can take a hard look at our own walls and decide that today is the day that they come down. We could find a neighbor and let them know they're not alone -- that we hurt, too. We could invite a college student over and talk Jesus and The Bible on the living room floor over Chinese takeout. We could call up the single mama for a Chick-fil-A playdate. We could be brave and send the text message that says "I miss you." Why would we wait until tomorrow?

Jesus rose so that his Bride could rise. The world is desperate and this is our moment. 

This isn't some wide-eyed idealism or wild theatrics. This is how the world changes. Person to person, allowing others to stick their hands in our wounds so that they can know they aren't the only ones who are a little bit bloody from the fight.

Jesus prayed that we would be known for our unity -- that our single-mindedness, our hard and fast pursuit of his upside down kingdom come to earth, would be so magnetic that the outside world would be unable to ignore it. He asked this of God on our behalf.

And then he gave us some armor, because he knew that this day was coming. He saw the headlines coming down the pipeline and said you're going to need some reinforcements. 

We carry around the fullness of God in jars of clay, and God knows we're tired. He knows we're pressed. He knows that we've stood gaping at the wide mouthed grave of our dream of how the story would read had the pen been in our hands.

The invitation is simple, but it isn't easy. Stay. Give. Dare to show up naked and vulnerable with your wide open wounds, because the place you are standing right now is holy ground. It's where the healing happens. It's where we get filled up and sent out. Not the place you were yesterday or the place you will be tomorrow, but this moment right here and now.

It's the only one we've got. 

And we can trust that he's here.