Grace in the In-Between Places

There are places that take you from here to there. The places in between where you’re leaving, and where you’re going. The unknown places where you’re searching, understanding, discovering, grieving, exploring, resting, anticipating.

These places are bittersweet. They can taste of insecurity and loneliness. Or fear and unknowing. Sorrow and doubt. Anxiety with deep excitement. Complacency and fatigue. Hope and longing. Even pain and suffering. But when you depart from this in between place and you finally enter into your new reality – a new way of living — a seed of appreciation takes root. And you become thankful for the sorrow that led you to your knees. The doubt that convinced you of what you really believe. The loneliness that showed you real companionship. The unknowing that freed you from control. The fear that made you seek perfect love. The complacency that propelled you to live more fully.

Transitions, they are never easy. But they are places where we grow. And more than ever, it is in these in-between places where we need people and places to be environments of grace for us.

Transitions happen all the time. When a parent loses a child and is forced to learn a new reality. When a husband loses a job and stability is threatened. When a new mother births life for the first time. When a family experiences the divorce of love. When a child begins at a new school. When the one who raised you dies. When you leave home. When you move to a new place to serve. When you welcome to your family a child born of another mother. When anxiety sneaks in and becomes a new and unwelcome companion. When the one you love the most is lost from you forever.

We are a people continually walking through transitions because brokenness and healing continually takes us to new places.

And it’s in these places of transition where we contract and become more complete, ready for new life. Ready for redemption. Ready for blessing.

There are people all around you walking through one of these in-between places. These are places to meet people where they are. To love them while they’re in need. To be an environment where they are welcomed and feel the freedom to grow.

Be available.
Listen.
Ask.
Pray. And don’t just say you’ll do it, really do it.
Don’t have expectations of them.
Seek them out, don’t wait for them to come to you.
Invite them over.
Give them a home.
Feed them a meal.
Feed them love.
Treat them to a time of rest.
Ask them what they need.
Be a resource for them.
Empower.
Let them vent.
Cry with them.
Don’t minimize the struggle.

This earthen soil we live and walk is an in-between place. Thank you God for meeting us here. For being for us an environment of grace as we struggle to learn and live faithfully in our own broken realities and those we commune with.

edited from a previous post