By Charissa Kim Allen

One of my favorite quotes is by writer and activist, Anne Lamott: “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” Receiving grace requires acceptance of our present form. While grace eventually leads us to change and transformation, it must first make contact with our untransformed state. 

In college, I was a classic procrastinator. I’d put off starting papers until the days, or sometimes night, before the deadline. Of course, I’d start each new semester with a newfound drive to start my assignments earlier. But when it came down to it, instead of pulling up my work earlier, I’d find twenty other things to do instead.

Years after my all-nighter-filled college days, my therapist at the time shared a fascinating observation. “Charissa, your procrastination was a symptom of your perfectionism.” This didn’t make sense to me at first. I was used to associating my procrastinating habits with the “lazy/chaotic” side of me. But as we kept discussing, it started to click. By procrastinating, I was avoiding what felt painfully out of my control: a growing mount of pressure and the prospect of failure. Procrastination allowed me to avoid the discomfort of potentially not measuring up and to not face or accept my unfinished business.

This realization helped me to consider other areas in my life in which I was avoidant rather than accepting. In high school, as the peacemaking pastor’s kid, I avoided conflict because I could not accept others’ disappointment. During my self-reliant campus minister days, I avoided the reality of my burnout because I could not accept my limitations. In my season of seriously dating my now-husband, I avoided setting a timeline for engagement because I could not accept a fundamental shift in my hyper-independent identity.

Throughout all of this, there was always a gentle beckoning into God’s presence. I became good at avoiding this as well, because I knew it would mean risking pause, surrender, and releasing control. But the times I said “yes” to the beckoning, I would be touched by a grace that would disarm my self-protection. By entering the safe presence of a good Shepherd, I no longer had to avoid – I could start facing the uncomfortable things that fueled my avoidant behavior. 

Grace “meets us where we are.” Even when I enter with distrust, anger, or resistance, I always leave God’s presence changed. When we make contact with a safe and accepting presence, it empowers radical self-acceptance. And when grace meets us in that place of acceptance, it “does not leave us where it found us.” 

It is deeply vulnerable to accept our current state and circumstance as it is, especially when painful, triggering, and vulnerable feelings are involved. This is why the safe presence of another can help us tolerate seeing what we don’t want to see. In my case, this presence has been that of God, therapists, my mother, my husband, and friends. It is both sobering and hopeful to consider what it would look like for more parents, pastors, teachers, politicians, and leaders in society to learn this risky work of non-avoidant acceptance. 

My hope is that we all receive the grace to acknowledge what is difficult to see in and around us. May we become people who are courageously accepting of the fullness of our realities. May that acceptance empower healing, transformation, and change. May the grace of our Good Shepherd meet us where we are and not leave us there.

Charissa Kim Allen is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist working out of Orange County, where she lives with her husband and baby girl. As a former campus minister, minister’s wife, and lifelong pastor’s daughter, she is passionate about the mental, emotional, and relational health of Christian leaders as well as Asian American family systems.