Thank God for My People

I’ve spent the past week reflecting on how overwhelmingly thankful I am for my people.

The kind of thankful that makes you stop in the middle of an otherwise normal day and realize just how many people God has woven into your life.

People who know you. People who love you. People you can call. People you can sit beside without saying much at all. People who have seen you at your best and people who have been there when you were very much not at your best.

I’ve found myself thinking about all the different people who make up my life and how incredibly lucky I am that I get to love them—and be loved by them.

Family. Friends. Coworkers who became friends. Friends who became family.

People I worship with. People I serve with. People who have known me almost my entire life and people who somehow walked into my story much later and still managed to find a place that feels like they’ve always belonged there.

And somewhere in all of that reflection, one prayer keeps coming back:

God, thank You for my people.

The People Who Know Different Parts of Me

One of the beautiful things about relationships is that different people know different versions of us.

There are people I call when I need to laugh. People I call when I need to cry. People I text when I need someone to tell me whether I’m overthinking something. People who will absolutely encourage the overthinking just because it’s more fun that way.

There are people who know my faith questions. People who know my work brain. People who know camp-Torri. People who know mom-Torri. People who know the version of me who can talk for entirely too long over coffee. People who have watched me grow and change and become.

And then there’s my husband, who somehow gets basically all of them. Which, when I really think about it, is kind of wild. We live together, work together, worship together, we parent together, we serve together.

He sees the professional version of me and the mom version. The church version and the exhausted-at-home version. The version who has a plan and the version who is wandering around the house looking for something that is probably already in my hand.

He gets the dreams, the frustrations, the ideas, the faith questions, the ridiculous thoughts, the late-night processing, the excitement, the tears, and probably more conversations beginning with “Okay, hear me out…” than any human being should reasonably have to endure.

He really is my one person.

But even with that kind of love, I’m grateful that God didn’t create us to live life with only one person. Because there are things friendship gives us. Things family gives us. Things community gives us. There are relationships that stretch us differently, know us differently, challenge us differently, and love us differently.

And somehow all of those relationships together make life fuller.

I Haven’t Always Been Good at Being Loved

This might be the part I’ve been thinking about most.

I love being the person who shows up. I like helping. I like checking in. I like solving problems. I like being the one who remembers. I like sending the text, bringing the coffee, making the plan, finding the answer, or figuring out what needs to happen next. Being needed comes pretty naturally to me.

Needing people is harder. Needing people requires admitting that I cannot always carry everything myself. And apparently, despite my best efforts, I cannot. Sometimes I need someone else to listen. Sometimes I need someone to tell me I’m getting too far inside my own head. Sometimes I need someone to sit beside me while I cry. Sometimes I need someone to pray when my own words feel tangled. Sometimes I need somebody who knows me well enough to challenge what I’m telling myself. And sometimes I just need someone to hand me coffee, make me laugh, and talk about absolutely anything else.

The people I love have taught me that being cared for doesn’t make me any less capable of caring for everyone else. Maybe it actually makes me better at it. Because there is something incredibly humbling about realizing how often God has answered my needs through another person.

God Keeps Showing Up With Faces I Recognize

We talk about looking for God everywhere. In Scripture. In worship. In creation. In quiet mornings and beautiful sunsets. And yes. Absolutely.

But lately, I keep seeing Him in faces I recognize. In the person who checks in. In the friend who stays. In family who knows something is wrong before I’ve figured out how to say it. In someone who remembers a tiny detail I mentioned weeks ago. In the person who makes space for the complicated questions instead of trying to wrap them up with an easy answer. In the people who celebrate the little things because they know they were actually big things to me. In the ones who pray. In the ones who listen. In the ones who make me laugh so hard that, for a minute, whatever felt heavy doesn’t feel quite as heavy anymore. In the ones who say, in a hundred different ways, You don’t have to do this part alone.

Maybe that’s one of the ways God has been teaching me about His love.

Not only through the miraculous. Not only through the unmistakably holy moments.

But through ordinary people choosing to love one another extraordinarily well.

A text. A phone call. A cup of coffee. A hug. A ridiculous joke at exactly the right moment.

Someone sitting beside you. Someone praying for you. Someone remembering. Someone staying. Someone showing up.

Those things might look ordinary from the outside. But I’m not convinced they are.

I Hope I Never Get Used to This

I hope I never become so accustomed to being loved that I stop recognizing what a gift it is. I hope I never assume the people I love already know what they mean to me. I hope I say thank you. I hope I say I love you. I hope I show up. I hope I check in. I hope I remember birthdays and hard anniversaries and important appointments and the random little things people tell me because they matter to them. I hope I pray for my people when they ask me to. And when they don’t. I hope I celebrate loudly when life is good and sit quietly when words aren’t enough. I hope the people I love know that there is always a seat beside me.

Because recently, I’ve been reminded just how much it matters to have people.

Not perfect people. Not people who always know exactly what to say. Just people who choose to keep showing up. And somehow, I have been blessed with so many of them.

People who raised me. People who grew up beside me. People I married into. People who married into me. People I met through work. People I met through church.

People I met at camp. People who became family without sharing a drop of blood. People who have known me forever. People who haven't known me nearly as long but somehow know me deeply anyway. And one person who somehow shares almost every corner of this life with me.

My people.

I don't know that I'll ever have the right words for how grateful I am for them.

But maybe I don't need them. Maybe the prayer really can be that simple:

God, thank You for my people.

Thank You for the ones who make life lighter.

Thank You for the ones who aren't afraid of the heavy.

Thank You for the ones who laugh with me until my stomach hurts.

Thank You for the ones who have seen me cry.

Thank You for the ones who challenge me.

Thank You for the ones who encourage me.

Thank You for the ones who pray for me.

Thank You for the ones who let me pray for them.

Thank You for the ones who trust me with the tender parts of their stories.

Thank You for the ones who have handled the tender parts of mine with care.

Thank You for my husband, who somehow gets nearly every version of me and continues to choose all of them.

Thank You for friendship.

Thank You for family.

Thank You for the people who started as one thing and somehow became something much more.

Thank You for all the ordinary moments that I didn't realize were holy until I looked back.

And please, God, don't ever let me get so busy living this life that I forget to notice the people living it beside me.

Because this week, more than anything, I've found myself looking around and thinking:

Wow. I am really, really loved.

And I am so incredibly thankful that I get to love these people right back.