As I live, I keep seeing systems being built to fix issues in systems, and I see new systems being effectively the same as the systems that needed to be fixed.

I realized this as I was doing it. I had to heal from the wounds of the systems that caused me pain because though I did not enjoy the wounds, what I knew of working for good was learned from the infected systems. I was infected. I am infected. I needed to learn a different model from a healthier source.

So I stopped building a system, and started living with real people.

I looked around and understood why I needed to consistently judge my thoughts.

And one day in the midst of that period after I stopped, I got dressed to go to a worship gathering in a weird green dress.

It was an interesting dress that grabbed my attention when I first saw it. Then it arrived and I thought what in the actual hell is this.

So I tried it on, and thought ewww. Fail.

Priya and I looked at it, and looked at me in it and we had such a great laugh.

Somewhere in our laughter we thought that maybe it might be different when accessorized. I put it away.

Rest, weird dress.

Then one Saturday morning shortly after the night of our big laugh I awoke with a clear knowing that I needed to get to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (SDA) in the area. I was in Alberta, didn’t know the area, and hadn’t been to an SDA church in quite some time. So I called the one that I knew in a town further away. Getting there seemed out of reach.

I knew that I needed to go, and I had been learning to listen to what I know. So I persevered in getting there by asking the people around me if they knew of a way. There was no transit in, and no Uber out.

It turned out that there was an SDA church right close by. That is where I needed to be. So I began to get ready, and that weird dress began to say “HEY! I am for this.”

For some reason, maybe my listening is improving, I agreed to give her a shot. Weird Dress was right. She was for this.

As soon as I put her on, I realized that I was going to wear her again twice that same weekend as a part of a learning experience about how much more alike we are than different, and how unique and appropriately wonderful our differences were.

Weird Dress on me, and I in her, or is it I in she, set out on the first part of our adventure.

We arrived, as usual, in perfect time. Other people around us had been worried and stressed that we were going to be late – even though they weren’t even coming with us.

Weird Dress and I knew better. We were always perfectly on time, because we had been doing lots of work around releasing stressful ideas related to time.

And what a day it turned out to be. We met an Uber driver who taught us a LOT in ten minutes about boundaries. We needed that. He told us a story about a time when he had done what he said he would do, and how that went up to ten years later when someone tried to get him to do more. He said no. Simple. And then he looked at the situation and saw an area where he did need to say yes, and he did that. Thanks, Bob. I’m saying thanks now, and I have already said thank you to Bob in person for teaching me so much in ten minutes. I think Bob thought I was weird. 🤷🏾‍♀️ I don’t know. I’m probably wrong about that.

Anyway. So we arrived right in perfect time, Weird Dress and I. We heard a sermon that included an illustration which brought rivers of tears of joy and hope, and affirmation running out of me. It was important that this happened in a Seventh-Day Adventist church.

I’d grown up in the SDA religious community, and although I had come to see the value of some beautiful connections with people, I was very angry, hurt, and disappointed by the systemic Adventist experience. And I chose about a year ago to fully withdraw from membership with the denomination – from the system, not from the people.

Listening to that sermon which was full of things with which I disagreed and found harmful, AND also full of ideas and heartfulls of joy and light that were perfectly in tune with the encouragement that my soul needed that day was WONDERFUL.

Finish strong: even though we’ve been hurt, wounded, in pain, we can finish strong, especially if we do it together.

One of the biggest joys of my life has been releasing the stress attached to rightness and owning truth. We are a whole world of wheat and tares. The balance of wheat and tares differs in different places, and there’s a reason for that. We don’t understand the reasons. We just see the tares, and our instinct is to pull them up ourselves. Jesus said not to do this.

Jesus told us to wait until the right time, until the harvest. And harvest time differs for each one of us, and for each system.

We can, in our own minds, accept the existence of tares and figure out once we get to acceptance, how to exist with tares until the harvest, in ourselves, in others, and in systems. I’m finding this part to be my biggest challenge. I’m approaching conscious competence in this though. I am grateful.

So Weird Dress and I celebrated the gifts of connection that we received that day. We shared tears and prayers with the speaker, and we talked about how we have hope for change.

It was another healing day.

And it was so perfect that the end of that experience was a conversation in a washroom with two preteen Princess best friends who decided by the end of our conversation that they could be princesses who loved sports and other fun things, AND they agreed that they would talk to each other about disagreements with hope throughout their friendship.

Princess 1 began our conversation by complimenting me on how awesome I looked. Way to go Weird Dress. We rocked it.

Two SDA washrooms were a huge source of healing for me on that trip. It’s amazing that both times I had that experience because I decided to live as myself, embracing my bladder’s needs. Are we veering into TMI? Nah. It’s good.

The second experience was in a Burman University washroom where messages around consent and rape are placed in stalls in the women’s washroom. I don’t yet have the words to share about the powerful healing that happened for me in that space. The tears of power that have slowly begun to fall from the corner of my eyes as I write about that moment is all I can share of it. I am deeply grateful.

Weird Dress and I went to two other services at two other buildings with two different religious groups of different denominations that weekend. Each time we accessorized slightly differently in celebration of how much we are the same, with small differences.

All three experiences were wonderful. Each touched my heart and healed a bit more of my soul in connection with others.

It’s likely that nothing is as weird as we think it is. It is also good to know that where there is harm there can be healing and hope.

So I’m trying to learn to leave the tares for God, all three, to uproot at the harvest, and instead I am working on sharing my heart and my story, and whatever messages our God inspires me to share, as a part of our process of finishing strong, together.

Thanks for being on that journey with me Weird Dress. It’s so cool that because I paused to take a second look, I actually love you.