Dear Rachel,

I still can’t believe that you are gone. It seems like just yesterday I was reading a daily post during Lent. Your words were always there to inspire, challenge, cause me to think, etc. I believed your words would always be there.

Yet today, we all find ourselves in a world where you are silent. I don’t know what to do with that. Except grieve. Lament. Feel this heavy loss. Weep. 

I went to church this morning and as we sang about His grace and His blood and His worthiness, I wept. I wept because I’m so grateful for the gift that was you. I wept because I already miss you. I wept because I still believe in His grace and his saving blood and His worthiness and I realized that I still have a home in that sanctuary (albeit, a new one) in part because of you.

When I felt dissonance or disillusionment, your words showed me that I wasn’t alone. When I felt betrayed by the evangelical Church that I had been a part of my whole life, your words called them out on what is, really, their idolatry. In the midst of that pain, I never gave up on Jesus because you showed me a truer picture of Jesus than they ever did.

And you lived it out. You taught us all what fiercely loving people looked like. You expanded our view of God and experience of Jesus by showing us that His table is big enough for the mess of us and big enough to invite all to gather round it.

You showed us what courage looked like in speaking truth to power and advocating for us. You faced opposition, criticism, judgement and you persisted. You showed us that following a calling and steadfastness in the storm could be liberating.

You also made us laugh. No one will forget the image of you sitting on your roof. Or in your tent. There was joy so present in almost all of your writing. You taught us to not take ourselves too seriously and to laugh when we could. No one could make us laugh in one moment only to tear up the next quite like you. You were funny and poignant, a true gift.

You were so much to so many of us.  

And now your watch has ended (I know you were a GOT fan, too). You fought the good fight, you finished the race. You are home.

In the words of your friend, Jen Hatmaker, we are shattered.

We depended on you. And now we can’t.

Your work is done. Ours must begin.

Glennon Doyle said she was scared of a world where you weren’t writing. We all feel that. But I believe your death brings with it a resolution for the rest of us to take the baton. Your legacy will be an army that will rise to take up the cause and carry on the work you started. And just like you showed us, we will have courage. We will persist. We will welcome all to the table. We will be women of valor. Warriors of hope. We will love better. 

You are gone. But what you started is far from over.

Thank you.

“And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

#becauseofRHE

#eshetchayil