I need to be honest with you: this letter is a day late. Yesterday was my first day back in the office after some time away following Christmas, and it was a long day—the kind where you look up and realize hours have passed in what felt like minutes. The kind where the day you actually experienced was nothing like the day you thought you would. As evening approached, I had prepared a quick dinner for my family and was getting ready for a Zoom meeting for the NC Lutheran outdoor ministry board I serve on. And in that moment, I felt it all: discouragement, frustration, embarrassment. I hadn’t written this letter. This means our weekly email wasn’t sent. I had let you down. I had failed.
But then something important came to mind, something I think we all need to hear over and over again: “There’s grace for that.”
I served as a youth minister before and during seminary, and one of the last things I did in youth ministry was attend the 2018 ELCA Youth Gathering in Houston with an amazing group of youth and adults. (That’s them in the picture.) Over 31,000 people gathered together—nearly all teenagers under the theme, “This Changes Everything.” Each evening, we met in the Houston Texans’ stadium for music, fun, and inspiring speakers. One night, we were addressed by Will Starkweather, an ELCA pastor who bravely told his story about self-harm during his teenage and young adult years.
In college, when Starkweather revealed his secret to his pastor, that pastor told him he was going to hell. He left the church, dropped out of school, fell into deep depression, and continued harming himself. Eventually, he began to rebuild his life. He found a new church and divulged his secret to a new pastor—Pastor Carla. She listened, and then she said four words: “There’s grace for that.”
Starkweather told us that night, “Y’all, those words changed my life.”
Those words resonated with my youth that week, almost eight years ago, and they still resonate with me today. Don’t get me wrong—I know a late newsletter isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But how I felt last night? That is a big deal. It’s so easy to let shame and despair take hold. Our mistakes, our failures, what we said or didn’t say, what we did or didn’t do—we let these things control us and write a false narrative about who we are.
But here’s the good news: we are not defined by such things. Our mistakes or our shortcomings don’t define us. The actual truth is that “there’s grace for that.” All the parts of our lives that we try to hide—in shame, in grief, in fear—that is precisely where God places the cross and says, “I am here. There is grace for that. For you.” Grace changes everything.
Whatever you’re carrying today, whatever has you feeling discouraged or ashamed, whatever you think disqualifies you from God’s love: there’s grace for that, and there’s grace for you.
By grace,
Pastor Ethan
P.S. You really should watch Pastor Will’s presentation HERE.