Honestly, Sandie

Exposure 10/10 – DOUBLE EXPOSURE

Today’s song is Grow As We Go by Ben Platt. There is a line I have been thinking about all week and a phrase I heard for years inside the walls of a place I once loved: grow or go. No joke. Funny thing about life though… sometimes you go in order to grow. This song stayed with me because it feels like becoming in motion. Not healed. Not finished. Not tied up with a neat little bow. Just changed. Still becoming. Still learning how to trust yourself after silence, disappointment, and questions you were not supposed to ask. Over the last 144 weeks, I have listened to a lot of music while untangling grief, certainty, belonging, and identity, and this one feels like a companion to the story. Less soundtrack, more quiet witness. Push play while you read. I think you’ll understand why this one belongs here. 😉

Earlier this week found myself in seat 2A on my way to California.

Actually, “found myself in seat 2A” sounds too poetic. I selected seat 2A. Paid for seat 2A. Intentionally secured seat 2A because I am forty-four years old and have reached the stage of life where I prefer certainty where I can buy it and refuse to leave emotional wellbeing to whatever chaos boarding group C is emotionally processing. Window seat. Good leg room. Easy escape route. Excellent overthinking conditions. Perfect.

The man next to me sits down and the first thing out of his mouth is:

“Ever feel like you’ve just been on an emotional roller coaster?”

Immediately, I am like… sir. Welcome. You have arrived at the correct row. Hello, deep-feeling Honestly, Sandie reporting for duty. Emotional roller coasters are sort of my thing.

Then I find out the emotional roller coaster was about his phone charger.

His phone charger.

Apparently for a brief moment he thought he had lost it and emotionally spiraled. Reader, I did not even think this was weird because sitting in my bag were four chargers. FOUR. You know, in case society collapses or Apple personally decides to ruin my week. Preparedness is healing. Or anxiety. The line feels thin.

“I know exactly what you mean,” I told him, which sounds ridiculous until you become a grown woman who packs backup chargers for the backup charger because life has already surprised you enough.

We laughed. Real laughed. The kind strangers do when something unexpectedly human slips into the room. Then the conversation wandered into work, people, curiosity, life, and the weird mechanics of being human. Somewhere in there I learned he was a physicist.

A literal physicist.

Which feels fake now that I say it out loud. Like something a novelist would write and an editor would circle with a note that says: too symbolic.

Sure, Jan.

Because apparently the woman writing a ten-part series called Exposure about leaving church, losing certainty, and accidentally rebuilding herself gets seat 2A next to a physicist the exact week she realizes this post lands 144 weeks since leaving.

Normal.

No dramatic pause. No wise old mountain man energy. No inspirational TED Talk voice. Just matter-of-fact. Like science. Like truth. Like something obvious enough to almost miss.

Somewhere between charger anxiety and airplane philosophy, he said something simple. – – – That we are shaped by what we go through. – – –

And something in me stopped.

Because there it was.

The thread.

Not that pain is noble. Not that betrayal becomes beautiful because enough time passes. Not that fake leaders, silence, manipulation, disappointment, or watching people quietly disappear suddenly makes sense because time softens the edges.

Just this:

We are shaped. Sounds a lot like we are developed. Sounds a lot like what Sandie was told to write about in that shocking aha moment in the shower 11 years ago when she thought she heard a voice from above. “Sandie you should write a book”.

Developed…By disappointment and joy. By betrayal and tenderness. By silence. By kindness. By who remembers us and who quietly forgets to call. By the moments somebody reaches for us and the moments nobody does.

He looked at me and spoke a version of the line that my entire book will be based on. Everything we go though develops us into who we are meant to become all along. This concept was birthed from a moment on my couch with a dear friend as we witnessed how much our own children needed to be surrounded by the things they need exposure to. The things they needed to be developed by… If we could help to manage that – we could help them develop to the things that will help them grow in the ways we thought were great. Oh my oh my… My perspectives have changed a bit. I know some things have remained but the idea that we can control anything….

A weird thing happens when enough time passes. You stop replaying only the story and start noticing the person who survived it.

144 weeks since August 20, 2023.

One hundred and forty-four Sundays.

Twelve times twelve.

Listen, I am not trying to be weird about the math, but what are the actual odds that the exact week I realize this post lands on 144 weeks, life seats me next to a physicist talking about shaping, patterns, forces, and what happens to things over time? Physics, from my deeply unqualified understanding, is basically the study of what happens when things are acted upon. Pressure. Motion. Force. Energy. Cause and effect.

Which felt annoyingly relevant.

Funny thing though.

For years there was a phrase floating around those hallways:

Grow or go.

No joke.

At the time, I thought it meant courage. Stretching. Becoming. Keep moving toward the fullest version of yourself.

Except somewhere along the way, I noticed movement felt admirable right up until it stopped revolving around the institution. Choosing your actual life sometimes instead of proving loyalty through constant availability. Filling your own life up. Growing outside the approved walls.

Growth sounded beautiful until it looked like autonomy and leaving sounded tragic until you realized growth occasionally requires motion.

Funny thing about life:

Sometimes you go in order to grow.

Sometimes you grow because you finally went.

Because what if life is not random?

Not in a cheesy “everything happens for a reason” kind of way. More like this: what if enough time passes and you realize pain shaped you, betrayal shaped you, silence shaped you, truth shaped you, joy shaped you, and somehow life keeps handing you mirrors at the exact moment you need to see yourself again?

Not because you forgot who you were.

Not because you stopped hearing yourself.

But because after enough silence, enough weirdness, enough sitting at tables where you watched people choose the institution over actual people, enough saying uncomfortable things, some tiny part of you still quietly wonders:

Was I crazy?

I sat at tables once saying things like: I think God is still speaking. I think wisdom still arrives through living, breathing people. I think we hear now. I think god is still writing “BIBLE” through us today.

Those ideas did not always make me popular.

Funny how places built on certainty do not always love curiosity.

Still, somewhere underneath everything, I kept believing life speaks. Sometimes through timing. Sometimes through strangers. Sometimes through random moments in seat 2A where a person accidentally reflects something back to you that you needed to remember.

Turns out I was grieving belonging.

For a long time, I thought I was grieving church.

Certainty.

The version of me who believed loyalty guaranteed permanence. The version of me who thought proximity automatically meant love. The version of me who confused usefulness with care.

That realization hurts.

It also feels strangely freeing.

Healing did not arrive like lightning. Nobody knocked on my door with answers. Nobody explained the silence. Nobody called to tie the story up with a neat little bow. Sundays happened. Questions happened. Grief happened. Joy quietly returned when I was not paying attention.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I changed.

One hundred and forty-four weeks later, I still wish somebody had asked what happened. But somewhere in the silence, I learned to ask myself better questions.

For a long time, I thought I was waiting for someone to explain the story.

Turns out…

I was becoming it.