Thread by @aliciatcrosby

[STORYTIME] Sometimes life surprises you and I want to share a bit of how it snuck up on me.

Most of you won't know this but @jorymicah and I are very intentionally building relationship around accountability with one another which may surprise some of you.

We've known about one another for years & interacted in the past which often led to great facepalming & giving her up to God on my part lol.

But in the last year or so something shifted.

I began to see Jory soften, accept correction, & genuinely seek to understand in new ways.

I found myself proud of this woman I barely knew because I saw her actively fighting the culture in which she was formed and raised which is no easy task. I saw this white woman who by her own admission was defensive change it up and try hard to see and deal with her privilege.

That made me want to affirm her and tell her that I saw her because I did. Not as a way of offering her cookies but as genuine celebration of seeing fight that had not been there in this way before.

And without sharing a ton of details, that expression led to conversations in which we started examining what mentoring, accountability, and intentionally cultivating relationship together look like. We've been talking about how to do the slow, steady work of learning & sharing.

Jory is accountable to me in some ways and in others, I am now accountable to her. The dynamics of our relationship shifted and I honestly think we both are going to become better women and ministers because of what is developing in our friendship.

None of us can go at this work alone which is something @CandyCornball taught me.

Octavia Butler is teaching me that God is change. She says "we learn from God. With forethought and work, We shape God. In the end, we yield to God. We adapt and endure..."

These are dear truths!

Our adaptation & endurance means that our relationships & the perception of the image of God in another can change too. What @jorymicah & I are building delights me because there are ways we are choosing to yield to our change & choose to intentionally build love bc of who we see

So I take joy in sharing this with her consent as a way of reminding you that it is possible for things to shift and you find yourself building something powerful, beautiful, & life giving with someone that - for different reasons - may have once been unimaginable for you.