A letter to the Christian misfits:
Dearly beloved, I have to start my saying I'm so glad you're here. Overjoyed even. I know you've spent a lot of time thinking you're the wrong sort of person, me too, you don't think the same way to her people do, you see the world through a bit of a different lens, maybe you look so bright in a very grey atmosphere. I don't know what's brought you to me but I feel less alone now that you're here.
You don't have to hide anymore. You aren't too loud, too quiet, too big, too small, too much or not enough of anything in God's eyes. You know I believe God sat up there, thinking "I need more excitement in this world" or "I need more introspection" and out of God's beauty came you, messy misfit, wonderfully made, vital to the church.
I'm asking, as hard as it is, if you would like to come home. No, I don't mean change, fit in to what people have to told you a "Christian" should look like, I don't even mean go to church, I'm just wondering if you might come home to Jesus with me.
I wonder if you might look at yourself in all your colour and begin to believe you're worthy, that you might start believing you are just as amazing as God thinks you are. That you might see that being you in this world, authentically, faithfully you - might be God's whole plan, might be the very thing that saves you.
Christian misfits, no one gets to decide how much God loves you, no one is powerful enough for that. God made you as you are and I am so proud of you, and me, for starting to realise that 'coming home' shouldn't look like being what we've been told to be, but it should look like finally coming into our own after a lifetime of being told that who we are isn't quite right.
No, "Coming home is claiming the truth. I am the beloved child of a loving Creator. We no longer have to beg for permission from the world to exist." - Henri Nouwen
I love you to pieces,
Signed, a fellow Jesus loving misfit
