Be cautious when you follow others. Perhaps this warning hits a little deeper for me than it would for others, as I’ve been a follower my whole life, always carefully shrinking my own personality and my own thoughts and opinions to emulate instead those of my friends, my mentors, my peers. 

I almost changed the trajectory of my entire life based on the opinions of others. 

You can’t marry him, she said. You need to marry someone who can lead you spiritually. Abby, he’s divorced!

If you marry him, my pastor at the time told me, you will come to despise him. I reeled back, stunned. His words felt like a curse. A portent. 

Verbally, of course, I agreed, nodding as though I was in full alignment with what they told me. My pastor was my spiritual leader, and a man. Boundaries had deliberately never been allowed to exist in my childhood, and as I grew up, finding myself surrounded by a community of wonderful friends who I desired nothing more than to emulate, I had never even thought of considering them. I had no need for them. 

Yet deep in my soul, I disagreed. For the first time in my life, I thought differently. Their words stirred a deep unease within me that felt, to a girl unused to disagreement, something like rumblings of discontent. How could I call myself a true Christian but hold someone else — a man, a human — responsible for my spiritual life and growth? That seemed horribly un-Christian to me! I was not meant to be a follower of my husband or my pastor. Wasn’t I meant to be a follower of Jesus? 

Without words to express myself, or without knowing ways of setting up safe boundaries, the kind that would have led me to express I love you and I respect you more than words can say, and I am grateful to you for speaking what you believe to be true in my life, but I respectfully disagree and will do what I believe is right, the only option left for me was to withdraw. Separation was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and I know I didn’t do it in the healthiest of ways. But I did the only thing I knew how to do. I followed Jesus instead of people. I followed what I knew to be right, over others who were convinced they were right. 

It nearly tore me apart. I do not say that lightly. My mind felt like it was ripping itself apart, pitting the authority of people I loved so deeply, against the words of Jesus. I struggled with involuntary panic attacks, which came upon me when I least expected – usually in the middle of a workday, of course. I lost forty pounds, and for a girl five-foot-ten who has always been on the slimmer side, this put me into the double-digits, which absolutely terrified me. I was wasting away. 

But God. Aren’t those the most beautiful words in the human language? But God! 

The Lord stood with me, and strengthened me. 

And I’m still here. I’m still here!

It still hits me at times, the unexpected tidal wave of grief. Knowing that I am anathema to people I loved more than life itself, still destroys me daily. 

A couple years into my marriage (I still don’t despise my husband, incidentally) I came across an article expounding on the view that a woman – a wife – can be, should be, a spiritual leader for herself. That her faith doesn’t rest in the hands of her husband. It was written by a respected woman and theologian in conservative culture, and I figured if I shared her words, which carried much more authority than mine, perhaps I would have a chance at not being torn apart for my heretical views. 

The same woman who told me I couldn’t marry DJ commented on my post. I completely agree with this! she said. Great article!

I was stunned. I sat there at my computer, frozen, mouth agape, for several minutes. And my hands shook as it dawned on me that I had once nearly changed the trajectory of my life on the words of a woman who changed her mind! 

If there is a point to this essay, it is simply this. Following Jesus is always better than following people. God is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forevermore. People are fickle. Even husbands. Even pastors. Even spiritual leaders. I do not say to ignore their advice. We need people to help us through life, and oftentimes our friends can see what to us is a blindspot. But if you place other people’s opinions above God’s, you will live and die on the whim of others. 

Community looks a lot different for many of us these days. These days, the vast majority of US states have Stay-in-Place orders, not to mention even before those orders began, there were limitations on how many people could gather together. Churches went digital. Restaurants closed. The world seemed to shut down, and people were sent to their corners for universal timeout.

Yet, even before all this began, community meant something different, something unique, to each person. They say loneliness is on the rise, and that connection is at an all-time low. They blame the digital age for much of this, saying we give our time to scrolling social media rather than getting together with friends. Many of us share only the highlights, which in itself is isolating, because who can connect with someone who never struggles the same way you do? And we pull back, and we isolate further, and we post our own highlight reels, and we build our little bubbles that look so perfect to the outside world, but inside we’re aching with loneliness and knowledge of our own messy imperfection that we daren’t share.

Wanna know a secret?

My life doesn’t look all that different these days.

My community has been “a little different” for a while. My best friends in the whole world don’t even live in the same state as I do anymore. One of them never did.

And this virus has only served to reinforce our bond. We’ve started using a video messenger app to record messages to each other, and it’s been wonderful to see their faces. It’s also been new and different to see their faces. We usually communicate in writing, on various messaging platforms, and by tagging each other in Instagram memes.

I used to feel a little ashamed, a little bit less-than. Doesn’t everyone have a huge friendship circle they can spend time with in-person? It’s certainly been stressed to me that I should. That I was less-than if I didn’t. That there was something wrong with me. That I wasn’t living up to what God wanted of me.

The human heart craves connection more than almost anything. One thing this quarantine has stressed to me is this: I already have connection. And it is not less-than.

In fact, you might even say it is immeasurably more.