Honestly, Sandie

I take no liberties from the song I listened to while creating my post. Please listen to it as you read.

I had a dream last night that I was back at church.

Because my brain still has that building saved somewhere in its files.

I was sitting in service and I fell asleep. Not just nodded off. I had a pillow and a whole ass sleeping bag with me. Thirteen years of serving in that place and I don’t think I ever once felt relaxed enough to sleep through a service, but Dream Me had clearly entered a new era.

Except while I was sleeping, I could hear the person preaching making fun of me.

From the stage.

With a microphone.

While I was right there.

So I woke up pissed.

I grabbed my pillow, walked straight toward the stage and started hitting him with it.

“This is bullshit. Shut up. Why are you talking shit about me?”

With a pillow.

Which is maybe my favorite part of the entire dream. I was furious enough to confront the man with the microphone, but the weapon my subconscious provided was bedding.

Then I was done.

I didn’t stay there arguing with him. I didn’t wait for an apology or an explanation.

I started looking for my stuff because I wanted to leave.

First, I couldn’t find my purse.

The sanctuary was dark and I was looking everywhere. Behind things. Around things. Moving curtains backstage. Asking people if they’d seen it.

And it wasn’t just any purse.

It was my big green Portland Leather purse.

A purse I recently sold.

So there I was, in a church I already left, looking for a purse I already got rid of.

My subconscious has jokes.

I eventually found it, but then I had another problem.

The sleeping bag.

This giant ass sleeping bag would not fold up.

It had weird ties and straps and nothing made sense. I kept folding and rolling and trying to figure out what attached where, and while I’m doing this, the whole building is changing over for another service.

People are leaving.

Other people are coming in.

Someone else is getting ready to lead.

The sanctuary is being cleared and reset and whatever happens next is already happening.

And I’m in the lobby trying to get this fucking sleeping bag back into whatever tiny container it came out of.

While I’m fighting with it, someone I knew from those years comes over and tells me she wants to show me something.

She has two checks.

She points to the one on top and asks if I see it.

I look at the amount. Something like $142.

Okay?

I’m trying to figure out why $142 matters when she says, “No. Do you see who it’s from?”

So I look at the name.

And it’s someone I used to serve alongside closely. Someone I eventually had to cut ties with because what she said about herself and what I experienced from her stopped matching. Eventually I got tired of trying to make those two things fit together.

I looked at her name on the check and said:

“Oh. I don’t even like her.”

And went right back to the sleeping bag.

That part makes me laugh.

Because I didn’t ask why she wrote the check. I didn’t ask what it meant. I didn’t ask about the other check.

I didn’t give a shit.

I had a sleeping bag to fold.

And that’s the part of this stupid dream that has stayed with me all day.

Everybody else was still doing what everybody else was doing.

Someone was preaching.

Someone else was getting ready to lead.

People were coming in.

People were leaving.

Someone was clearing the room.

Someone had checks.

Someone with a microphone even had something to say about me.

And none of it was my responsibility.

I was just trying to gather my shit.

A purse from a life I’ve already gotten rid of.

A sleeping bag I couldn’t figure out how to put away.

And maybe that’s about as accurate a picture of the last few years as my brain could have come up with.

Because how the hell do you fold up thirteen years?

There are no instructions for that.

You don’t just decide you’re done and suddenly everything fits neatly back into its designated little bag.

Some of it was beautiful.

Some of it hurt like hell.

Some of it I still miss.

Some of it I wouldn’t take back if you paid me $142.

Some things I thought I needed, I don’t even own anymore.

Some people can show up with their name on a check and get an “I don’t even like her” before I move right along.

And some of it still doesn’t fucking fold.

I think I’m okay with that.

And then, because my brain apparently wasn’t finished connecting things, I knew exactly what song belonged here.

my tears ricochet.

There’s a line in that song about collecting stones and not knowing what they’ll mean.

Well.

If you’ve been here for the last few months, you know I went and collected the damn stones.

One by one.

I gave them names and colors and stories. I wrote about the people who stayed, the people who left, the people who changed me, the people who loved me, and the people I had to learn how to love differently.

Seventy-five days of writing and thirty friendship stories later, I suppose I have a pretty good idea what some of those stones mean now.

And I don’t think it’s lost on me that so many of them came from the same years I’m still trying to fold up and put away.

That’s the weird thing about all of this.

I don’t want to throw those years away.

There are people from that life I will carry for the rest of mine.

There are stories from those years I wouldn’t trade.

There are stones worth keeping.

I just don’t need the building they came from.

What I noticed when I woke up wasn’t that I had dreamed about church again.

It was what I was doing there.

I wasn’t leading.

I wasn’t fixing anything.

I wasn’t worried about what was happening next.

I wasn’t asking anyone to understand me.

And even when somebody stood on a stage with a microphone and made me the subject, I didn’t stay and fight for the microphone.

I hit him with a pillow.

Then I went looking for my stuff.

I wasn’t trying to get back into the room.

I was trying to get my shit out of it.

I’ll keep the stones.

I’m still working on the sleeping bag.

And I’m definitely taking the pillow.

You never know when somebody might start talking shit.