Hi Storied family!
After a week off with family, we’re excited to be back to our usual programming. We only have one big announcement and that’s that this month’s Zoom meeting is a different time than usual! So if you’ve been wanting to join and haven’t been able to make Saturday mornings work— make sure you check out the new time.
Happy weekend!
Gabby and Chris
Thank God We’re Not Done Growing
By Gabby Llewellyn
It was last July. I giddily shuffled onto a bench with college friends I hadn’t seen in years. We were all reunited for a friend’s wedding, crammed into a brewery in Fort Collins at the wedding reception talking about the old times in college.
When suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, one of the girls turned to me and said “Hey remember when you were super judgemental about drinking in college?”
The chatter at the table grew quiet as I remembered the event she was recalling. I was a senior student leader in our college ministry. There were a bunch of underclassmen who were engaging in underage drinking, and encouraging other kids to drink illegally as well.
I remember feeling (probably unduly) a tremendous sense of responsibility to be a moral arbiter as a student leader. I went on a bit of a campaign, encouraging students to stop drinking even if it was legal for them to do so, citing the verses in Romans where Paul encourages the church to give up things that make their brothers stumble.
I felt so right. So much urgency in the matter. So holy.
And now, a decade later I found out that I had also damaged and traumatised some people along the way of my holy crusade. So much so that this person I hadn’t seen in years felt it was important enough to bring up as one of the first things she shared with me many years later, in public, at a party.
I apologised, but I don’t remember much of the night after that. I had a terrible pit in my stomach.