Fifteen years ago, all six of us were on the same page. We aren’t anymore.
That realization would have launched me into a panic as a senior in college. I would have wept with confusion and fear and doubt, praying for us to come back together in agreement and unity. What I understand now that I didn’t before is that unity and agreement are not the same thing.
We’ve all changed, but we haven't all changed in the same ways. We’re all asking questions, but not the same questions. We’re all letting go of some things, but not the same things. We’re all keeping some things, but not the same things.
Disagreement is unsettling, and I have to fight my gut response to keep talking it out until we get back to common ground. It rattles my soul to think that ground might be gone, and my mind starts asking ridiculous questions like, “Can we still be friends, like best friends, if our faith doesn’t look the same? Will they think I’m naive because I still believe? Will they think I’m hellbound because I don’t? Were we wrong before? Are we wrong now?”
There was ease in reciting the answers our faith offered rather than wading through the muddy questions our faith compels.
Maybe that’s our new common ground: murky, knee-deep sludge.
It makes sense that love hangs out in the sludge.
This season, these questions and doubts will forever hold a spot in our journey, but we all know better than to believe this is our landing spot. It can’t be. We’re not done yet.
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "280 Words".
