Honestly, Sandie

Gemstones 26/30

Iolite is a stone that asks you to turn it in your hand.

From one angle, it is blue. Turn it again and violet rises through it. Another angle brings gray, and sometimes it nearly disappears into clear. Not because the stone is uncertain. Not because it has become less true. Iolite holds all of those colors at once. The light only decides which part you get to see.

That is called pleochroism.

It is the kind of beauty that makes you slow down. Iolite does not throw itself across the room and demand to be noticed. It has depth. It has layers. It changes depending on where you are standing, but the center of it stays the same.

It was once used as a compass stone. Sailors looked through Iolite to find the sun when the sky and water blurred into the same endless color.

That is why I chose Iolite.

Because there are people in your life who become part of the landscape before you even know how much ground they are going to cover with you.

Iolite was there when we were brand new to the Tri-Cities. Our oldest was eight. Our second was four. We had a newborn at home with me, and I sent the two big kids off to VBS at a church I barely knew, with leaders I had not met yet.

Iolite was their crew leader.

The first VBS my kids ever attended here was called High Seas Adventure, which is funny now because Iolite was once used as a compass stone. Sailors looked through it to find the sun when the sky and water blurred into one endless blue.

At the time, I was just sending my eight-year-old and four-year-old into a church I did not know yet, hoping they would have fun and come home with snacks, crafts, and no major emotional injury from a pirate costume.

I had no idea one of their first leaders would become part of so much of our family’s story.

High seas, tiny crew leaders, and a stone built for finding direction. Life has a weird sense of continuity when you look back far enough.

That was the beginning.

Before youth ministry. Before staff meetings. Before service plans, camp ideas, leadership conversations, and all the things that later made our lives overlap in bigger ways.

Our kids were part of the fabric of that building. We were there constantly. They grew up in hallways, kids rooms, youth rooms, rehearsals, events, camps, services, and all the little spaces in between. Iolite saw them often enough that it was never just a passing hello on Sunday morning.

Iolite watched them get older.

Iolite watched me carry our youngest.

We got to celebrate Iolite getting married, then celebrate a first baby arriving into that family too. Baby showers. First birthdays. Watching someone else step into the joy and full-body chaos of parenthood after you have already been living there for years.

Iolite did not just know us through a role.

Iolite knew our family in motion.

Before youth was even part of our world, Iolite came home from college and helped lead summer kids camp. That turned into creative work. Videos. Photos. Easter ideas that made certain people nervous for reasons that were honestly exhausting.

One year, I wanted to use “Imagine” by John Lennon in an Easter opener because I wanted people outside the church bubble to hear something familiar and realize we were talking about the same human ache. Other people reacted like I had proposed replacing communion with a fog machine and a secular playlist.

Iolite got it.

Iolite took it to the right people. Iolite helped get it approved. Iolite backed the idea because Iolite could hear the heart underneath it before deciding whether it fit inside the approved little box.

That was how our work became connected.

Iolite kept inviting me into the work because Iolite trusted what I brought to it. Not just the finished product. The thinking behind it. The way I could see the whole room before people walked into it, spot what was missing, and help turn a half-formed idea into something people could actually step inside.

We built a lot together. Enough that I stopped feeling like I was proving I deserved a place and started believing I already had one.

One year, we decided to do the opposite of normal camp. Kids came early in the morning and stayed until midnight. We brought in speakers, took them to Silverwood, used our own building as home base, and somehow kept everybody alive for five straight days.

It was a big swing.

Iolite trusted me to help build it.

Not just to show up with a clipboard and make the graphics pretty. Iolite trusted me to help shape the thing itself. To take vision and make it practical. To remember what was missing. To ask the questions nobody had thought to ask yet.

Iolite treated my brain like it belonged in the room, not just my hands.

Iolite handed me microphones in youth.

Iolite asked me for student names because there were a hundred faces and Iolite never wanted a kid to think they had been forgotten.

Iolite wanted students to have ownership. There was a conversation about building a student influencer program where the whole point was not to create tiny church interns in matching T-shirts. The point was to let students have a say. Let them help build the youth space. Let them create the energy. Let them feel like this place belonged to them too.

That mattered to me because Iolite did not only talk about belonging. Iolite built it.

I still have notes from messages about friendship and connection.

“God can’t heal what we hide.”

“We need friends who don’t leave when things are off.”

“You can not do life alone.”

That is why this is personal.

A week after we moved here, Iolite was helping lead my children.

Years later, Iolite was part of the rooms where Alex and I gave everything we had. Iolite knew what we brought. Iolite knew we were not people who vanished the second life got hard. We had already stayed through conflict, grief, burnout, family pain, leadership mess, and seasons that could have sent us running.

I thought shared leadership meant shared responsibility.

I thought if our family was being pushed out, there would be someone in the room saying, “Hold on. You do not get to do this to them without a conversation.”

I thought Iolite had a voice.

I do not know what Iolite was allowed to say. I do not know what happened behind doors I was no longer invited behind. I do not know if there was a fight, a warning, a silence, or a line Iolite could not cross.

I know there was no follow-up.

I know there was no real conversation after.

The only access left now is accidental.

A family event. A public room. An airport.

When our paths cross, Iolite still asks about the kids and seems to care about the answers. There is still history there. There is still recognition. There is still the strange ache of being known by someone who is now standing on the other side of a line nobody will explain.

Then there are the other moments.

The airport.

No eye contact with me.

No eye contact with anyone in my family.

I do not know what was happening inside Iolite. I will not make up a story that I cannot prove.

I know I saw pain in Iolite’s eyes.

I know I was carrying the same thing.

It fucking sucks.

Years before any of this cracked open, I had a dream that we were backstage at a church production. The parking lot was packed. People were waiting to get in. I was worried there would not be enough room for them.

Iolite was sitting in a circle backstage, eating crackers and offering me some.

Then the dream shifted.

I was trying to get home. Trying to reach for my ID. Trying to leave.

Someone clicked a handcuff around my wrist.

I do not need to turn that dream into a prophecy. I only know I spent years trying to create room for people while the walls around me were closing in.

Iolite changes color when you turn it toward the light.

Blue. Violet. Gray. Almost clear.

Same stone.

Different angle.

I knew Iolite as the person who showed up for my kids before any of us had titles. I knew Iolite as the creative leader who backed a bold idea. I knew Iolite as someone who made room for my voice, asked for my help, trusted my instincts, and cared whether students felt known.

I will not pretend that friendship was less real because it became impossible to keep.

Iolite was my friend.

And yes.

It is personal.