When I first walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous in Fullerton, California, I wasn't looking for God. I was trying to figure out how my life had brought me to a place I never imagined I'd belong.
I remember looking around the room and thinking, How in the hell did I get here? And perhaps even more troubling, How am I supposed to fit in with these people?
Tattoos everywhere. Nose rings, eyebrow piercings, vapes, and energy drinks large enough to require a screw top. Seriously, I didn't even know Monster came in that size.
I had spent much of my life believing I had a pretty good understanding of what respectable people looked like. And here I was, surrounded by people whose appearances and pasts challenged nearly everything I thought I knew.
The irony, of course, was that I was sitting in the exact same room, for the exact same reason.
I was judging people for the wreckage of their lives while sitting in the middle of my own.
There's a phrase in Alcoholics Anonymous that I've come to appreciate deeply: "Contempt prior to investigation."
It's the tendency to dismiss something, or someone, before ever taking the time to understand it. To form an opinion without knowing the truth. To allow our prejudices to become convictions.
And that was me. I had walked into a room full of people I knew absolutely nothing about and had already decided who they were.
What I didn't know then was that some of these people would become my closest friends, my spiritual teachers, and among the greatest examples of God's love I would ever encounter.
Some of the greatest stewards of God's love are people who, at first glance, might scare the hell out of you.
They have rough exteriors, seedy pasts, and stories that would make most people uncomfortable. They are the broken, the battered, and the once-lost. Yet I've come to believe that it's through the cracks in their brokenness that God's light shines the brightest.
Growing up in church, I had developed certain impressions of what goodness was supposed to look like. Somewhere along the way, I confused outward appearance with inward character. If someone didn't dress, speak, or behave a certain way, I was quick to make assumptions about who they were.
And then God placed me in a room full of people I might have once crossed the street to avoid.
What I discovered was extraordinary.
I found humility in people who had once been consumed by pride. Compassion in those who had known cruelty. Generosity in people who had lost everything. And an understanding of God's grace that could never have been learned from appearances alone.
Much like Jesus, who surrounded Himself with sinners, outcasts, and the rejected, I began to discover that the people who had gotten life terribly wrong sometimes understood God's love more deeply than those who believed they had always gotten it right.
These friends of mine don't pretend to be saints. They know exactly who they were, what they've done, and what it cost them. Perhaps that's why their faith feels so genuine. They aren't trying to impress God. They're simply grateful He never gave up on them.
I've come to believe that some souls are brought closest to God not despite their destruction, but through their surrender after it.
And here's the beautiful irony: I walked into those rooms wondering what was wrong with everyone else, never realizing that God had brought me there to confront what was broken in me.
I came in carrying my pride, my judgments, my shame, and the wreckage of a life I could no longer manage. And somehow, these people I might once have avoided welcomed me without hesitation.
They didn't ask me to explain my failures. They didn't need to. They recognized the pain behind my eyes because they had once carried it themselves.
They loved me before I knew how to love myself. They showed me grace when I couldn't extend it to myself. And through their friendship, they taught me something about God that years of religion had never quite reached in my heart.
God doesn't wait for us to become beautiful before He loves us. He loves us in our brokenness, and through that love, something beautiful begins to emerge.
Today, some of the people I love most are the very people I once might have judged. These rough-looking souls, with their tattoos, piercings, troubled pasts, and giant cans of Monster, have become some of the greatest blessings of my life.
I thought I was walking into a room full of sinners.
What I found were people who had been rescued by grace, and who were now reaching back to rescue someone else.
Me.
And I wonder sometimes, had I walked past that room, had I allowed my judgments to turn me away, how much of God's love I would have missed.
I came into those rooms afraid I didn't belong among those people. Today, I thank God that I do.
Because the people who once scared me became the people who helped save my life.
And I believe God knew exactly who I needed long before I ever walked through that door.
"People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." — 1 Samuel 16:7
