How to choose between Outrage or Absence

What to do when you don't know what to do

Seven years ago, Nate and I went to Austin for a weekend away from Dallas. The church we were attending, and had once felt at home in, made national news (for good reason) and the news was not good. We had been thinking of leaving the church for two years but kept wanting to give it another chance. We decided needed to get away, get some perspective, think, pray.

We spent one night in a little rental unit on the east side of the city and in the morning, walked to a food truck for a biscuit breakfast.

While we waited for our food, I opened my phone up to an email that sucked the breath out of me. A person who had harassed me for years was escalating her harassment to stalking levels, telling us she knew our address and we should watch out. I showed the email to Nate and we ate our food in shock. While we were talking about the email a few hours later, I got a text from a friend with the most awful, shocking, and bewildering news about one of our church leaders, news that hadn’t yet been made public yet. We decided to cut our weekend short and head home. On the way there, I checked the news again and saw another mass shooting tragedy had just unfolded in our country.

We landed at home exhausted and hurting, feeling pressed in from all sides. Neither of us wanted to go to church in the morning, especially this place we had once loved deeply and now felt bewildered by in many ways. But, we thought, we will go. Surely something will be said, even if it’s just about one of these things. Surely we can mourn together.

There was a guest preacher that morning. He cracked jokes, he tried to warm up the room, I don’t remember anything specific he said, only the absence of what was not said. I remember the feeling of hot growing up from my stomach to my throat to my forehead. I remember leaving, feeling in shock. I remember the sense in my gut that our time there was done, the finality of the moment. I remember turning to Nate as we drove home and saying, “We can’t go back.” I remember him taking a deep breath, swallowing hard, and nodding.