The older I get, the more I realize that life is far greyer than it is black and white. Life is really complicated and messy and rarely do decisions come down to “right or wrong.” Most of the decisions I make are between “kind of makes sense” and “maybe makes a little more sense.” Things can be both hard and good at the same time…and most of the people I know (including myself) are mostly good people with some things we still need to work through.

It would be easier if life was black and white and the lines between good or bad and right and wrong were clear but they are not. The lines are blurry and the space is grey and you know what...I’m ok with that. I am finding that it’s actually a great place to be. I love living in the tension of this middle place because it means I’m still living. I’m still learning. I’m still growing. Yes, it makes life more complicated but it’s where I want to be.

I am somewhere between old and young, feeling like I have something to offer but a ton of things to learn. I am somewhere between being a feminist and dancing my heart out to the most disrespectful Chris Brown song. I am somewhere between understanding God’s grace and living in shame. I am somewhere between a good human being and the most selfish person that I’ve ever met…and I am ok with all of it.

Being “somewhere between” means that God still gets to show me new things. Sometimes, when we think we have arrived, we become so rigid and set in our ways that we stop holding tension. We stop growing and shifting and changing and that is a risky place to be. We become less like clay for molding and more like cement that will inevitably have to break if God wants to move us. And that is not somewhere I want to be.  

I have been so disappointed recently with the rhetoric that I have heard from my Christian brothers and sisters in response to Target’s new inclusive bathroom policies (full post on this coming soon). But at the core of it all is fear—fear of anything new or different than what we are not used to. Fear that has been created in part by our unwillingness to sit in the middle space and maybe admit that we have been wrong before. Maybe admit that we don’t understand something. I am sure so many people would feel more comfortable if people were gay or straight, male or female. Or maybe we would be more comfortable if people were either criminal or innocent, racist or not, sexist or not, right or wrong, good or bad, sinners or perfect. But they are not. None of us are. We all exist somewhere between being a little bit sexist, kind of maybe racist and occasionally like to sin.

So this blog will be an ode to the middle space, to being somewhere between and acknowledging the tensions that exist when you live life in a real and messy way, this is the journey that I am on and I invite you to join me in it.

This is life Somewhere Between.