Just Show Up By Kara TippettsSample

"The Dance of Showing Up"

JILL:

I’ve known Kara for about three years. She’s had cancer for two and a half of those. I’ve come a long way from when I first started showing up for her, but I still struggle with doubts of what to do. Kara’s wise friend Ruth calls it the tension.

That visual beautifully describes what is felt as we walk through suffering with someone and make decisions regarding how to show up. We’re pulled in two directions, or six directions, and we don’t know which way is right.

How am I supposed to help? How do I show up? Does showing up mean staying away? Did that last sentence even make sense?

As Ruth has said: “It’s okay to tell God you don’t know where to go from here.”

It’s okay to not know how to show up for someone or how to take the first steps into walking through suffering with a friend.

Ask for guidance. He will meet you there.

You can tell Him how you feel and what your fears are, and He will open the path for you to take a first step. And then the step after that.

The tension of not knowing what to do will stay with you as you show up for each other. And it will create a dependence on God and the community around you instead of on yourself.

KARA:

I love to dance. But you know what I love even more than dancing? Watching my kids jump around like crazy to the beat of one of our favorite songs. Their bodies give way to the rhythm of the music and all I see is innocence and energy and passion. They don’t necessarily know what the steps are; they just feel the music and want to move. I love it! That’s why dance is such a great image to keep in mind as we practice showing up.

Our wanting to show up, even if we don’t know what to do or say or even feel, comes because something is nudging us, or rather Someone. It’s the love of Christ compelling us to not just sit there but to get up and move. To show up. And if we can keep that in mind—that Christ’s love is what’s tugging at our hearts—then it’s never just Jill moving toward me on her own. It’s always Jill and Jesus moving toward me. Or Jesus and me moving toward Jill. So when we say this book is about doing it better together, that word together means all of us, but at the very center is Jesus, Immanuel, God-with-us.