Just Walking Through the Door Can Be Tough

I got into a fight at the gym.

For context, I am allergic to conflict. I hate it and I avoid it at (almost) all costs, probably to a fault. My boss knows that a request for a meeting has to include the disclaimer, “YOU ARE NOT IN TROUBLE,” or I’ll panic for the rest of the day. I remember one time being at my cardiologist’s office, and while I was waiting, a couple of women in the lobby were having an argument. By the time I got in to see my doctor, he was concerned about my abnormally high blood pressure and that was just from being in the vicinity of conflict.

When I say I hate conflict, I mean it.

Another note before I get to what happened (and I will get to it, I promise) is that I am decidedly NOT a gym person. I’m always nervous to go, and it takes a great deal of talking myself into it just to walk in the doors. I am uncomfortable in workout clothes, I don’t know where to put my stuff, I don’t feel confident in how any of the machines work. I’m basically awkward in my own skin and that feeling is amplified by about a million percent in a gym. 

But I’m trying. And so, I go…sometimes.

I hadn’t been to the gym for a few months, but I finally tried again recently and it didn’t go well. My husband and I split carpool duty and arrived in different cars a few minutes apart, so the staff probably didn’t know we were there together.

Which is how I overheard a couple of employees laughing at him behind his back.

The details of that aren’t super important, but when I heard them, I chose to overcome my disdain for conflict and say something. Instead of apologizing or owning his behavior, the employee made a bunch of excuses. It made me very uncomfortable, and now I’m not sure I want to go back.

I know I should go. It’s good for my heart, I want to age well, I’ve put on a few pounds and I don’t want to buy new jeans, I have more energy when I go. So many reasons. But I just don’t feel welcome there. It might be a while before I talk myself back into it.

The thing I keep thinking about, though, doesn’t really have much to do with the gym.

Just like there are “gym people” for whom going to the gym and working out come naturally, there are also “church people.” I’ve been a regular churchgoer since my senior year of high school. I walk into my church and I have people there. Friends. I know where to drop my kids off for Sunday School. I know where the coffee is.

But not everyone is a church person. For a lot of folks who have never been to church (or haven’t been in a long time), making the choice to go is one that takes some self-convincing. Researching which church to go to, what time the service starts, where to park…what to wear! It can feel like a lot.

Now, imagine you put in all that effort. You drive your nervous self to a new place and walk in the doors, but no one helps you when you get there. There isn’t someone showing you where the bathrooms are, no one tells you if the doughnuts next to the coffee are for before or after church. Maybe someone even suggests a different seat because you accidentally settled into their seat.

When we first moved to Houston, we received a pretty chilly reception at two different churches we visited. We didn’t go back. Thankfully, we are “church people,” so we went somewhere else and found our church home.

For a lot of people, though, that’s going to be the last time they darken the door of a church for a long time. Maybe ever.

Whether it’s physically at church or simply in how we carry ourselves in the world as Christian people, I think it’s important that we do what we can to help people feel welcome in the family of faith.

Sometimes the difference between someone coming back to church or quietly deciding “this isn’t for me” is simply whether they felt like someone was glad they showed up. We can choose to put up a barrier and make things more difficult for people who are dipping their toe in the water, so to speak, or we can open the doors wide and make room...even for folks who aren't (yet) "church people."

Seems like a pretty simple "What would Jesus do?" moment to me.