First Gathering, Graced Hands

🕯️ This morning, before the gathering, grief arrived uninvited and heavy — the kind that sits in your chest like a stone and doesn't ask permission. I felt it building as I drove to the office, and rather than push it away or hold it at arm's length, I simply allowed the tears to flow. Just me, the road ahead, and the Holy Spirit witnessing what needed to come out. There's something about surrendering to sorrow in those quiet moments — not fighting it, not pretending — just letting it move through you like water.

By the time I arrived, I'd cried what needed crying. The heaviness was still there, but it had shifted. Grief had been acknowledged, and somehow that made space for grace to move in.

Yet something shifted the moment I stepped into that room.

✨ There's a peculiar grace that comes when you show up, broken and willing. The moment I met Robyn, I knew we'd serve well together. She has an ease about her, a kindness that doesn't require explanation — the sort of presence that makes you feel less alone in the work. There's something sacred about meeting someone for the first time and immediately sensing: Yes. This is how it's meant to be. The Holy Spirit whispers those things sometimes, doesn't He?🤔

🕯️ The technology had its own story to tell. The Zoom chat went mysteriously silent — we discovered it muted, which felt like a small rebellion from the universe. Then, in our eagerness to welcome the online participants, we accidentally elevated the online host to full host when Robyn should have been co-host. My mind immediately began its familiar spiral: What have I done?🤔 How will this affect the gathering?🤔 I should have been more careful. The perfectionist in me was already drafting a list of ways I'd failed.

Then, as I went to say goodbye to Elias, he looked at me with that knowing gaze — the one that comes from someone who knows you well enough to see the story you're already telling yourself — and he said it plainly: none of it was my fault. As leader, he was taking full responsibility. He knows me well enough by now to understand that I might overthink and beat myself up over things that simply weren't mine to carry.

These aren't failures, though my heart wanted to catalogue them as such. These are the places where grace shows up — not in the absence of mistakes, but in being known and protected by someone who sees your tendency toward shame and gently removes that burden from your shoulders. Grace doesn't say you're fine, it doesn't matter. Grace says I see what happened, I'm taking this, and I'm not letting you disappear into self-recrimination. That's the kind of leadership the Lord models — the kind that absorbs the weight so others can breathe.

Robyn and I simply carried on. We adjusted. We smiled. The gathering held its shape because love, not logistics, was anchoring it.

✍️ What struck me most deeply was this: I stood in that room — with grief still present, with technical gremlins having their say, with my own uncertainty about stepping into this public-facing role — and I served. The Speakers Institute has been coaching me to stand, to speak, to lead. I thought that coaching was preparing me for stages and audiences. Instead, it's preparing me for this — the courage to serve from the broken places.

🕊️ That's the truth I'm sitting with now: we don't have to be perfect to be faithful. We don't have to be healed completely to help others find healing. The kintsugi of my morning — the sorrow, the uncertainty, the technical stumbles, and Elias's steady protection — these aren't what qualify me to lead. God does. Yet when I surrender these broken places to Him, they become conduits through which His compassion flows. When you've allowed your own grief to be held by the Holy Spirit, you hold others' stories more gently. When someone you trust has absorbed your shame and you've received that grace, you're freed to simply love with His love.

The gathering wasn't flawless. It was real. It was alive. It was peopled by souls who came to connect, grow, and serve together — and that's infinitely more valuable than technical perfection.

🌱 As I left, something had shifted. The unexpected invitation to step into this administrator role didn't feel as daunting. Instead, it felt like the Lord saying: I know you. I know your heart. I know your wounds. Come. Serve from that place. Let the breaking make space for My grace.

Robyn waved goodbye with genuine warmth. I thought: This is the beginning of something good. Not because we got everything right, but because we both showed up willing to get it wrong together — and because there are leaders like Elias who know how to hold space for our becoming.