it takes a little convincing

Our church has recently begun an event for women called Refresh.

It was held a few weeks ago.

I had to be convinced to attend the meeting.

Not really because I didn’t want to go.

That wasn’t it.

I’d had it on my calendar for the last three months.

I did want to go.

However.

The day hadn’t gone as planned.

I didn’t think school would take quite as long as it did that day.

I wanted to finish a project I’d been trying to finish for two months – the bed skirt.  (Still not really completed correctly, in fact.)

Then life handed me an excuse because Kevin was returning late from a meeting in Georgia and I was going to be late anyway and he and I would have been just passing through the kitchen, exchanging car keys, kisses and dinner directions.

And I have always strongly disliked those types of hand offs.

(It’s just how my heart rolls.)

So I figured I’d just stay home.

But then there was Kevin.  Arriving home in the nick of time.  Assuring me he had it all under control.

He was insistent.

Even as I tried to brush my teeth he said no and then passed me gum instead saying, “Just go, you need to go.”

I went.

Then I drove and in the car I had a conversation with my old friend Paranoia.  “Why do I have to go?  What’s going on?  Why does he want me to leave?”

I have so many voices to tell to be quiet.

But I do.

I tell them to be quiet.

I’m late so I enter alone and it’s a large church and a large gathering of women and I don’t immediately see anyone I know.

I feel like high school and I again think of sliding back out the door, wandering around Hobby Lobby instead and then driving home.

But I don’t.

I sit down.

The teaching is good.

Really good.

Afterwards a friend invites me to join her and some friends at a restaurant for decompressing and hanging out.

Some ladies I know.  Some I don’t know very well.

And it was good.

All good.

And I get in my trusty maroon steed very late in the evening to head home again and I laugh to myself.

Real laughing.  The out loud variety.

I laughed at myself.

My own insecurities.

About the things that seem to wear a person down when you’re home alone, things that just ache to break your spirit when you’re by yourself, things that crush your sense of self-worth.

About how when you say some of those things out loud to your friends you can be reminded that they’re pretty funny, pretty ridiculous, things.

(mostly.)

But more importantly –

They are not the sum of what matters.

You’re able to sort of see yourself through someone else’s eyes or through the touch of hilarity that can be and you realize that it’s okay.

It’s funny.

And that’s a good thing.

Women need other women.

We need to laugh at ourselves.

We need friends.

We need community.

 And sometimes we need a shove out the door to get there.