Engagement

Conversation requires two people. To have conversation you must meet the other person and offer substance in the conversation. There are many reasons why someone wouldn’t engage in conversation, I would like to  briefly discuss one of those reasons. -The topic of conversation is to personal. Such as one I have tried to have of late on personal suffering and the faithfulness of God through it all. I’ve learned that when suffering and faith are spoken together, it can be unsettling for some. Real testimony doesn’t live in abstractions or tidy answers—it comes from places where loss has been endured and God has been encountered there. That kind of truth requires listening, stillness, and humility, and not everyone knows how to stand on that ground.
Sometimes disengagement happens because a story like mine confronts what someone believes about God. Faith that has been tested by grief carries a weight that theoretical faith does not. To truly engage, a person has to be willing to sit with pain without fixing it, to witness without explaining it away, and to honor a God who remains faithful even when life has not been gentle. Not everyone has the capacity—or the courage—to do that.
I am learning not to make my testimony smaller to be more comfortable for others. My story is not too heavy, and my faith is not too much. What I carry is holy ground. And not everyone knows when to take off their shoes.