Grace and Truth

There are phrases you forget. Others hang around.

This one came from a leader two gigs ago. Years later, it still hasn’t left:

“An above-average series of unfortunate events.”

Interesting way to put it. Especially when you know what the “events” were.

My daughter had died.

Jubilee spent 393 days in the NICU. For more than a year, our family learned to live somewhere between home, work, church and a hospital room. Then she was gone, and we had to figure out how to live in a world that kept moving without her.

Money was tight. Really tight. I kept working. Kept functioning. I donated plasma on my lunch breaks for extra money until one day I nearly passed out afterward. Something inside me was running out of road, and I didn’t understand why.

I know more now.

Earlier this year, my spectrum results came in. Suddenly, parts of my life that had never quite made sense started talking to each other. The masking. The exhaustion. The mental real estate consumed by unresolved conflict. The invisible cost of navigating environments that seemed to cost other people almost nothing.

Then I looked back at that season: bereavement, financial pressure, neurodivergent burnout. All stacked on top of each other before I even had the language to understand why my own wiring made some of that weight so costly to carry.

So, sure. “Unfortunate events.” Might as well call a hurricane an above-average amount of wind and rain.

I don’t believe that leader was trying to be cruel. I can’t know everything behind the words. But intent isn’t really why the phrase stayed with me. It stayed because language can be technically defensible and still be painfully inadequate for the human being standing underneath it.

That’s where I’ve landed on something I wish more leaders understood:

Context isn’t the enemy of accountability.

I haven’t always communicated as clearly as I could have, and I certainly haven’t navigated every professional situation perfectly. Being neurodivergent doesn’t absolve me of responsibility. Neither does grief. But context isn’t an escape hatch from accountability. Understanding someone more fully makes accountability more accurate.

If somebody who was once engaged suddenly isn’t, get curious. If performance changes after catastrophic loss, get curious. If someone trusts you enough to disclose a disability, get curious.

Not “What’s wrong with this person?” but “What’s happening to this person?”

I’ve started calling that holy curiosity.

There was real kindness during Jubilee’s 393 days. Coworkers gave their time. People helped me get to the NICU. My employer gave our family flexibility during an impossible season. Distance has helped me appreciate those things more, not less.

I’m also a words-of-affirmation person. Looking back, I can see times when I was waiting for care to arrive in the language I understood best while missing some of the ways people were already speaking it. That’s mine to own.

But kindness and understanding aren’t necessarily the same thing. The fairest way I know to say it is this: I received more kindness than I knew how to appreciate at the time, but less intentional understanding than I needed.

We also understand neurodivergence differently than we did when I was growing up. People like me can make it through school, relationships and entire careers without understanding why seemingly ordinary environments exact such an extraordinary internal cost.

We know more now. That should make us more curious now.

We talk about grace. Truth. Mercy. Restoration. Bearing burdens. Eventually those words have to clock in. They have to survive somebody’s grief affecting performance, somebody’s disability complicating communication, somebody making a mistake, somebody becoming inconvenient.

Jesus had a way of refusing to reduce complicated people to the most immediately visible thing about them. He noticed. He asked. He moved toward suffering.

Maybe that’s where better leadership begins too.

There is another place where this conversation matters just as deeply: the church. Faith communities can be remarkably good at showing up when tragedy arrives. But what happens when the meals stop, the crisis passes, and grief or special needs simply become part of a family’s everyday life? That’s where I want to go next—in Part Two, When the Church Moves On.

Lately I’ve found myself thinking about something I don’t hear discussed very often.

As a disclaimer, I’m genuinely grateful that the Church has become more willing to talk about healthy boundaries, emotional well-being, and protecting people from abusive or destructive situations. Those conversations matter, and Scripture certainly leaves room for wisdom when safety is at stake. There are circumstances where lasting distance is not only appropriate but necessary.

But I’ve also been asking myself another question: When genuine repentance is present and safety is no longer the issue, are we still making room for God’s ministry of reconciliation?

Sometimes I wonder if we’ve become so accustomed to protecting ourselves that we’ve quietly lost the expectation that Christ still transforms people. Either way, our responsibility remains an absolute as outlined in the Word.

In Acts 11:18, we see that God alone grants repentance—a gift of His grace that Paul echoes in 2 Timothy 2:25. This highlights an essential reality: The grace that forgives is also the grace that transforms.

Consider Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18. While the passage is often remembered for confronting sin, His aim is ultimately restoration—winning back a brother or sister.

Paul paints the same picture in Corinth. He instructed the church to discipline a man living in open, unrepentant sin. But after that man repented, Paul’s instruction changed:

“You ought rather to forgive and comfort him… reaffirm your love for him.” (2 Corinthians 2:7–8)

Notice the progression: Accountability. Repentance. Restoration.

Repentance doesn’t erase consequences. It doesn’t instantly rebuild trust. It doesn’t obligate anyone to return to an unsafe relationship.

Reconciliation doesn’t always mean restoring a relationship to what it once was. Sometimes it simply means laying down bitterness, extending forgiveness, and remaining open to whatever measure of restoration wisdom permits.

Yet neither should we treat genuine repentance as though it changes nothing.

I’ve also found myself wondering whether our desire to protect our peace can slowly become something else. While boundaries can absolutely be an expression of wisdom, they can also become places where reconciliation quietly stops.

That’s worth examining—not to produce guilt, but to ensure our instinct is still moving toward the ministry Christ entrusted to us whenever wisdom allows.

Every Sunday we proclaim that Jesus makes people new. We celebrate that He removes hearts of stone and gives hearts of flesh. If we truly believe Christ transforms lives, shouldn’t we expect to recognize His work when genuine repentance appears?
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Paul writes: “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” (Romans 12:18)

I appreciate those opening words: “If possible.” Paul recognizes that reconciliation isn’t always achievable because it doesn’t depend on one person alone. Some wounds require lasting distance. Some relationships remain unsafe. We cannot control another person’s response.

But we can control our own.

As far as it depends on us, we’re called to pursue peace, own our failures, confess our sin, forgive as we’ve been forgiven, and remain open to the restoring work of Christ whenever wisdom allows.

I don’t write this to minimize the importance of boundaries. I write it because I don’t want to miss the work of Christ when He begins changing someone’s heart.

The ministry of reconciliation isn’t only about God reconciling us to Himself. Through Christ, He also entrusts His people with becoming ambassadors of that same reconciliation in a broken world (2 Corinthians 5:18–20).

Perhaps one of the greatest evidences that we truly believe the gospel isn’t simply that we rejoice over God’s power to change us—but that we remain humble enough to recognize His transforming work in someone else.

If we proclaim that Jesus makes all things new, may we never become so guarded that we fail to recognize His new creation standing right in front of us.