Come Sit With MeSample

As I write this, restrictions ease and we begin to reengage, and I feel the impact of what’s been lost everywhere—from walking an aisle in Target to gathering with our now-altered small group. Maybe reengaging is still fresh for you too, or maybe you’re feeling a long-familiar angst that has scabbed over. Either way, there’s no going back to what was. There’s only showing up to what is—what’s changed, what’s broken, and what’s still healing.

There is grief I’m still not sure how to approach in the wake of 2020. Cynicism has shown up at my door, looking like the stronger and safer guide forward.

I read through the Gospels, desperate to find the tenderness of Jesus because my own tenderness feels like a stranger. In one instance after another, Jesus’s tenderness leads the way. It moves me to read and reread John 4 and to remember how He went to Sychar in Samaria. He intentionally arrives there thirsty and tired. Jesus, the Living Water, humbly asks a woman, a Samaritan, for a drink. He puts Himself in a place of need with her. He talks to her about the tensions and walls between Jews and Samaritans before He reveals His identity.

Jesus’s patient tenderness toward the Samaritan woman reorients me. I read the passage again and again. Did you know the Samaritans and Jews were enemies who had been violently at odds for centuries? They could not agree to disagree. Their history was full of violence, hatred, deep distrust, and destruction. When the disciples arrive, flabbergasted to find Jesus talking to this person, not only does He stretch their perspectives about what’s possible but He stretches their tenderness with His own. And then they all stay in Sychar for two more days—sleeping near, eating with, and choosing to know and be known by people they would have been taught to see as enemies.

Jesus never asks any of us to muster up our own tenderness; He knows we’d never have enough. He only tells us to follow and abide in the abundance of His tenderness.

Sandy and I have had to navigate how to remain for each other, for our friendship, and for our families, despite so many hard decisions for her family and mine—decisions that haven’t always seemed compatible within our friendship. At some points it probably would’ve been easier to make a clean break, distancing ourselves from each other, numbing the painful feelings that come from loss and change. Instead, we’ve worked to keep tending each other’s wounds and turning toward the difficulties we both face. In this case, our tenderness toward each other has looked less like superficial words of positivity and more like letting go, being honest, and staying patient. It looks like asking God for His tenderness when the pain pokes at our hearts and tempts us to let them become stiff, choosing instead to turn toward each other despite the raw edges of our different choices and needs.

My guess is that you also have relationships with raw edges. It’s hard to be tender when those edges rub against each other. But maybe that’s the gift of this long and unwanted season—being forced to learn new ways to sit with old friends.

-by Tasha Jun