I almost didn't go.
I treated it like any other Sunday. Remembered the day before. Still on the fence. Still finding reasons.
I spent the night at Adeola's. Driving home Sunday morning, the thought came up. The journal entry. The whole "going might be the point" line I wrote with my chest. The decision I announced.
I dismissed it almost immediately. Told myself I'd just journal about the internal battle instead. Like writing about not going was the same as going.
It wasn't.
I wrestled with it the whole drive. Then I texted Adeola. Asked if I could come with her to the church she'd been to the last time.
That was it. That was the whole turn. Not a revelation. Just a text.
I conceded. I made it.
Here's what I noticed.
The first thing the small obedience cost me was the version of myself that gets to sound spiritual without doing the spiritual thing. I'd already written about going. I'd already framed it as the turn. If I hadn't gone, the journal would still exist. The decision would still be on the page. But it would be a lie I told in public.
That scared me more than the awkwardness of showing up.
The preaching was on Judges 6:24-26. The pastor said God allows bad things to happen so we'll trust Him. He said anything we look to as a source to meet our needs is an idol. He said an altar is a place where people worship, and that building a better altar is choosing to make God bigger. He said this week we'd find God's word that reveals the idol we've been worshiping.
Some of it landed. Some of it didn't. I wrote things down without deciding yet what I believe about them.
I have questions I haven't answered.
Does God bless people who aren't prepared for it? If a man is blessed and isn't prepared, does that mean it isn't from God? I'm not sure. I think the easy answer is yes, He does, because grace is grace. But I also don't fully know what "prepared" is supposed to mean in that sentence. I'm sitting with it.
The other thing I noticed, and I'm being careful here because I don't want this to sound dismissive: most pastors I've heard in America sound like public speakers. Polished. Cadenced. Trained. I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm asking if it's a prerequisite. Is being good on a microphone the same as being called. Is being called supposed to sound like that. I don't have an answer. The question keeps coming up.
What I know is this: I went. After all the dragging of my feet, all the wrestling, the text I almost didn't send, I went.
And the small obedience did what small obediences are supposed to do. It didn't transform me. It didn't fix anything. It just got me into the room.
Sometimes that's the whole assignment.