“You know what, I think I’ll take that tissue. This is…this is just a lot,” he says, pretending to cry.
“You’re literally an ex-gang kid…I think you’ve got tough enough skin to handle words.”
He gasps. “Low blow, man. And gangsters have feelings too.”
I ignore his theatrics. “I mean, this is all still new for me. I’ve never…done a real relationship before. I’m trying not to mess it up.”
Erik slides back into serious mode for a moment. “I’m actually really proud of you. You have a really good heart, and you two were lucky to find each other. You really are the perfect match and the perfect balance to each other. You…you get each other…on a level other people can’t.”
I look over at him, and he’s giving me these big, proud-parent eyes.
“Okay, don’t make it weird,” I tell him, and we both laugh.
We jump in my car, and Erik plays shotgun DJ for all of five minutes until we drive over to the girls’ dorm.
“Back seat, man,” I tell him with my thumb.
He points at himself like he’s being profiled. “You’re gonna stickmebetween Pretty and Petty?”
“Yeah, I’ll send you some prayers. Get on. We all know you have a thing for Petty anyway,” Isay, laughing. “One day you’re going to have to tell me what the deal is with you two.”
He groans. “Just some unfinished history, that’s all,” he says, trying to hide his smile, and climbs out as the front doors open and three voices all hit the air at once. Simone is glitter and volume, Lani is smirks and threats, and Lydia is quiet and everything I look for first. She slides into the front seat, and I lean over, taking her chin in my hand and kissing her. Fake gags erupt from the backseat, and Lydia laughs against my mouth. I want to bottle that sound up for all the bad days.
“Morning,” I say.
“Morning,” she whispers back.
Lani forces Simone to sit in the middle, and Erik jokes that she won’t catch on fire if she touches him. Lani rolls her eyes and mumbles that she probably would.
The church is the warehouse kind. It’s all pipe and tall ceilings and a propped-up stage. People fill the rows and greet the people around them. We find a couple of seats near the back, and Lani nudges me, trying to be funny, telling me I look like a youth pastor today, which makes me second-guess wearing this sweater.
We hit that mid part of the sermon where you sometimes start dozing off or zoning out, when my attention is pulled back to what he’s saying.
He reaches for a stool and sits. “I want to say this plainly…Jesus is not waiting for a better version of you. He meets you where you are. By a well with a woman who’d run out of ‘second chances.’ At a dinner table with people, ‘respectable folks’ crossed the street to avoid. He comes to you.”
People nod.
“This isn’t about religion as a box to check,” he says, tapping the Bible. “This is about relationship—learning to live loved. The grace of God has very little, if anything, to do with your performance. You don’t have to earn this. You couldn’t if you tried.”
He glances across the room. “Grace doesn’t make sin cute. Grace makes us hate sin, because we finally see what it costs and who paid. We see all the negative effects. We see why he wants us not to be burdened by the aftermath of sin. ‘Rules’ in the Bible were never just a list you needed to check off to be ‘good’ in God’s eyes. They aren’t even really rules in the ‘obey or you get the switch’ kind of way, but guidance. I don’t know if you know this, but God actually knows a lot more than you do.”
I let out a small laugh at that.
“He knows what comes after thosecoolandfunsinful things. He knows the pain in you and the pain in people around you that comes from sin. He knows the destruction drugs and alcohol have on not only your body but also on your mind and on the relationships with people around you. He knows the pain, hurt, and emotional ties that come with sleeping around with any and everyone the wind blows your way. He knows the domino effect that stealing, cheating, killing, or harming other people has. He knows who gets hurt when those little lies aren’t so little anymore. He knows the resentment that can build up in a marriage when one spouse continues to talk down on the other and stays in their selfish ways when they’re supposed to be one flesh, loving each other the way God loves us, lifting each other up, and continuing to serve each other every day in the small, meaningful ways. These aren’t things he tells us and warns us against to ‘take our fun away’. He’s trying to protect you, not control you. If he wanted to control you, we would all be perfect little robots with no free will, but that’s not the case. That’s never what he wanted. He cares about you, he cares about your heart, he cares about your mind, he cares about you affecting the other people around you—who he also cares about.
The shame can sometimes say, ‘I am bad,’ so you hide. Grace says, ‘I am loved,’ so you step into the light and let yourself be held.
Quick sidebar. If you’re walking through things like anxiety, depression, addiction—God isn’t rolling His eyes at you. Bring your medsandyour prayers. Bring your counselor and your community and all your questions. The church is not a museum for finished people; it’s a hospital for the living.”
A hum moves through the rows around us.
“What do we do with this grace?” he asks. “You know, there’s a big difference between remorse and repentance. Remorse is, ‘I feel terrible…and I’ll probably do it again by Friday.’ Repentance is a change of direction. Not sinless perfection—direction. Think about a GPS—if you miss your turn, it doesn’t say, ‘You idiot, journey canceled.’ It says ‘Recalculating.’ That’s grace. It gets you home, no matter how many wrong turns you take. There’s always a way back.”
He stands again, energy rising with him. “Some of you are terrified of that word ‘repent’ because you heard it weaponized. But in Scripture, repentance is an invitation back to life.”
He nods toward a galvanized tank by the side wall. “That’s why we baptize. Not because it makes God love you or magically gets you into heaven, but because it’s a wedding ring—the outward sign of an inward reality.’”
He softens. “And if you’re thinking, ‘But I don’t feel ready.’ Welcome to the club. Nobody gets baptized because they nailed it. We do it because Jesus did, because He told us not to be ashamed of the journey and who’s navigating it.”
