My Friend Mary & The Beauty of Showing Up

I think Riley was in high school when our family met Mary.  At that time, if I have my story straight, she was serving as a youth leader.  Her love for the kids at our church and her compassion for my daughter drew me to her immediately.

One very bizarre and unusual Thanksgiving, we even enjoyed a quiet and restorative meal together – just the two of us – due to highly unusual circumstances in both of our own lives.

We attended a Bible study called Haven together.  And, there’s likely more that I am forgetting.

Here’s my point – she’s a truly lovely human, both inside and out (she’s the pretty is as pretty does my grandma always preached about).   She’s wise beyond her chronological age and she’s deep and she’s fun and she’s funny and she’s really very kind.  

She works with a local organization called Whole Fitness that is working to change the way women see their own bodies and their own health through the lens of how Jesus sees them as whole people.

And I asked her to write a guest post to both share her own story a little and to share what’s happening this summer for Mary and Whole Fitness.

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by Mary Mackenzie

If you asked me what I wanted to be as an adult, when I was growing up, I would have definitely told you the first woman president.

This was way past the age-appropriate stage of outlandish-career-options. 

You know, when you were five and told people you wanted to be: a soccer player, a specialized in rain-forest-animals vet, and a dancer, and a mom, and a singer, and… also a baby penguin. Possibly a box of lucky charms, but without the weird yellow marshmallows that nobody can identify. 

Not me. 

No. 

I wanted to be the first lady in the Oval Office. (Never mind that I just had to google if I should capitalize the “O” in Oval Office. You do. Both of them actually.) 

Never mind that I can’t really stand politics and that I still have to spell check the word pol-i-tics. (Words are hard, okay. Especially when you have to put them on paper.) 

I’ve just kind of always wanted to be the first something. And in control. And the best. But that’s called perfectionism and I’ve already single-handedly funded my therapist’s retirement fund. So, I’m not trying to go back any time soon. I’m just telling you how it was. No regression here. Just telling a story. 

I know what you’re thinking 

“Typical outcome of a generation that got trophies for just participating.” 

Umm no. Definitely shunned all trophies for anything after I went with my mom to PICK UP our team soccer trophies in 2^nd grade. 

It was UNBELIVABLE that you could just purchase a trophy at a store and then hand it out to kids at a pizza chain that not only allowed rodents around the food, but highlighted and used the mouse activity as a marketing ploy. The whole situation was just disconcerting. Genius for revenue all around (I see you Chuckie C, and applaud you.) But disconcerting none the less. 

In my mind, trophies came directly from the top- probably the White House- the man president. 

The female version was being reserved for when I turned 35. 

Yeah. My parents don’t take much credit for those growing up years. They’re a little more willing to be identified as having produced me now… a little. It still gets dicey when the person has known me since the time of: chopping-off-my-brother’s-pinky-finger-tip-by-slamming-a-door-on-it-and-then-telling-him-I-hope-he-learned-his-lesson. I mean, he closes doors properly now. So, I’m still not sure what the fuss was about. 

A girl’s got to do what she’s got to do to survive in a house with only brothers. I’m not above a necessary finger pricking for the sake of a good lesson. 

The other option that became more appealing, especially after Jesus and starting to live life with his Spirit, was to be someone with an open kitchen table and a coffee pot.

That’s not really a viable answer as a senior in High School.

But it really has been what I’ve grown into wanting. 

Give me whatever job, wherever with whomever. 

I want there to be a place where stories have space and time to unfold and be witnessed. 

I want to be a part of creating and holding open that space. 

Getting to be with people and their heart feels like sacred ground. 

A few months ago, a group of us got to run a 5k to support Julie Valentine Center. 

I wanted to throw my hands up. 

Grab the hand of someone next to me. 

I wanted to sing loud with the girl in my headphones when she sang that we weren’t meant for graves but thrones.

I wanted to cheerlead the people who have walked through the darkness with braveness. 

The people who have decided that the ground is not their home. 

That a hole is not their lot in life. 

The people that have sat-up, stood-out, and have shown-up.

But also? 

I wanted to watch the weirdness of people becoming a pack. I wanted to soak in being in the middle of it. A pack of people pounding pavement.
Not running from anything. But just showing up to say,

“We’re here for something.”

Showing up to say

We’re for the estranged becoming the endeared.

We’re discounting anything that has fed us the lie that we’re disqualified.

We’re a people with the ability to see what really is instead of what’s readily visible. 

We see what is but know what’s really up. 

There are people with secrets and people hearing crippling voices. 

There are scars and there are scary things happening.

But also?

There are cheerleaders and pace setters.

There are men who wake up and take sons to a park to say ‘we don’t know what to do, but we’re going to show up.’

There are women who stand at drink stations and hand out water and say “We’re not sure how to reach out, but we’re going to show up.”

There are friends moving towards a finish line saying, “We don’t know how to come against the angst, but we’re going to show up.” Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is show up.

Sometimes we meet unbelievable existing visionaries and victory-bringers and live vicariously on their level.

But really?

We just need to be the visible.

So we show up to red seas not ready to rip.

We stand at curtains not yet torn.

Because showing up always comes before the solution.

So find a place.

Show up.

Then? 

Show up.

And then  . . . 

show up.

Until you see the Red Sea rip open. 

Until the curtain rags top to bottom in two. 

Until the loaves and fish become a feast.

This July a team from Whole Fitness is getting to go to San Pedro, Dominican Republic and team up with an existing kitchen table at New Hope Girls Home.  

The girls at New Hope are girls and women that have been rescued from sex trafficking and given a place to be loved, and rehabilitated in the most holistic sense. 

Some of these girls are as young as EIGHT years old.  

The brokenness of people who would buy innocence and the girls that have been purchased for pleasure can feel too insurmountable to even engage.

We get that, right? 

There are all kinds of things that feel insurmountable.

Mostly because it feels like we’re going to get it wrong.  

But sometimes the best question isn’t 

“Will I get this wrong?”

 It’s

“Do I look like Jesus?”

I think more than becoming a person who doesn’t get it wrong, a person that can make anything right, this whole earth is waiting for a people who show up to love without an agenda.

There are things we’ve busted up and broken down and there’s no undoing the rubble-ing that we’ve done, that’s been done.

But really, there’s bravery in believing that people need connection more than correction. 

For everything that seems insurmountable we simply become the visible. 

We want to look just one person in the eye and witness what’s going on. 

We hold just one person’s hand as an act of saying, 

“You aren’t alone.” 

Every hard, unholy thing will eventually evaporate. 

Every. 

This summer a group of us are going to get to go teach the girls of New Hope strategic ways to move their bodies to help release stored trauma and turn “off” the autonomic function of the brain and re-engage the parasympathetic system to give them more bandwidth to heal.

That means there will be mommas who aren’t passing unresolved trauma onto their babies. 

It’s not a fix-all. 

But it’s one more tool. 

To show up and teach trauma-specific-yoga and Jesus centered drum- stick classes and hold one sweet girl’s face and say, 

“We’ll show up for you. We’ll witness and not look away.” 

There are a few ways you can show up too: You can give, pray, or even look into Dare for More , New Hope Girls Home or Whole Fitness and how you can personally get involved.  

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