I read an article today about casserole. No, it wasn’t a recipe shared on a mommy blog. It was written by a lady who was looking at the Church (big “C” intended) and seeing a glaring dysfunction. The link to it is here, but I’ll also summarize it for you. Basically, she describes a time that she was going through a divorce – devastated, hurt, just trying to make it day in and day out. Within that time frame, no one from her church reached out to her. No one showed up at her door with a casserole. No one came by to show her the love of Christ. No one came because divorce is one of those sticky, awkward things that happens in the church. People either judge it, or aren’t sure how to engage it, and so they don’t. And divorce, obviously, isn’t the only situation of this type that elicits this kind of reaction (or, rather, non-reaction.) The author then goes on to contrast her season with a season when her friend’s husband died. Immediately the church showed up. Mowing her lawn, doing house repairs, and, yes, even bringing casseroles.

Reading this article struck me deeply and I instantly heard the line from a song by Casting Crowns play through my head: “Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see? Does anybody even know she’s going down today?” This song has struck my soul deeply lately more than I ever imagined it would.

A few weeks ago, I was on my way to work and stopped at a coffee shop en route to get my second dose of life-giving caffeine and the shop, which usually has worship music playing, had that song playing. It was all I could do to keep myself from all-out sobbing as I was waiting for my latte. I went back to my car, looked up the song on Spotify, and listened to it again so that I could fully engage in whatever it was God was doing in my heart at that moment. You see, the moment I heard that line – “Does anybody hear her? Does anybody see? Does anybody even know she’s going down today?” I was taken back a year and a half ago to see a broken, lonely girl who didn’t have any friends, in a dark room, making a choice. My heart broke for her.

When I read this article about the casserole, I felt a second wave of emotion in regards to that same situation. But this time, instead of being taken back to a moment of choice, I was taken back a few months before that happened. The same girl sat across from someone she had reached out to in a moment of desperation. Faith hanging by a string, love tank floundering on empty – desperate. She reached out looking for love, looking for a connection. She sat across from the only place she knew to turn at the time and was given a pat on the back and told to read her Bible more. I saw the girl who didn’t go to church for approximately three months following that because she couldn’t muster the energy. During that entire time, while she was absent from the church she grew up in, from the church where she was almost universally known, no one, not one soul, reached out to see how she was doing or where she was.

Here’s what I need to be understood. I don’t blame anyone but myself for my choices. Those were mine and mine alone. But I look back, and I see times that I tried. I tried to do everything that I was “supposed” to do to pull myself up out of the place I was in. I reached out for a casserole moment. I gave someone the chance to engage with the heart of God for me. They didn’t.

I’ll be honest with you; I need to do some business with Jesus on this. There are some things that I need to address in myself – some anger, some hurt. That’s real life. But we all have those things. Just please understand this. I have broken over two years of silence on my blog because I have finally hit on a message that is important enough that I was able to put words to it. My draft folder for my blog is full of posts that I have started and then abandoned because either it wasn’t the time for me to share them or I wasn’t the one who was supposed to share the message. But I have both words and liberty in writing this.

Church, we have to do better. I say “we” because I am fully included in this. We have to be willing to engage in the difficult conversations and bring casseroles to people who might be living in a way we don’t “agree” with. They need us to sit with them in the ambiguity, in the hurt, in their brokenness. In the times that they’re making choices we can’t support, they need us. Just like I needed it. We have to stop avoiding other people’s awkward situations just because it’s not comfortable for us or we don’t know what to do or say. Just show up. And, for the love of all things holy, please don’t tell someone that the solution to their pain is just to read their Bible more. Before you say those words or any like them, stop and give them a hug, and use that time to think of something more encouraging. Then show up again. And again. And again. And again. And don’t stop showing up. If we can do this, maybe, just maybe, we’ll begin to see the life of Christ permeate the walls of the Church again.

Erin