A Messy Hope

At times it can seem impossible to find friends - real friends who are almost like family. Erin Moniz shares an unlikely discovery in her life.

Elisa

A Messy Hope

By Dr. Erin Moniz

“It’s 6:00 a.m., we can probably call Barrett.”

I said this to my husband, Mike, after many long moments of silence. We had been out on our front porch together in our pajamas since 4:00 a.m., since the break-in occurred.

We awoke in the early morning hours to our home alarm going off. It had been a long, hot summer day and we forgot to close and lock one of our small living room windows. We had had break-ins before but never while we were home. On this evening, a burglar squeezed through our open window and was inside our house. But he set off a motion sensor and panicked. In his panic, and drug-induced lack of judgment, he escaped our home by going headfirst through the kitchen window above our sink.

When the police arrived, we were instructed to stay outside our house, now a crime scene with evidence, and wait for the one crime unit in our county to process the blood and fingerprints. It would take them until 11:00 a.m. to arrive at our house.

Meanwhile, we were sequestered on our front porch.

The first two hours, we just sat in shock. But at 6:00 a.m., I realized it was Sunday morning and our friend Barrett, who is an insomniac obsessed with physical fitness, would likely be up to go for a morning run before church. Mike called him. Sure enough, he was up and said he would come straight over.

In a few minutes, not only was Barrett on the porch with us, but he brought us coffee and breakfast. He also brought his laptop. He remembered that I was in grad school and would need to email my professors. He didn’t know that our laptops had been stolen, but his instinct to help preempted my own thought to ask. I was able to contact all my professors that very morning because of his thoughtfulness.

He sat with us, listened to us, and cried with us. As the morning reached a reasonable hour, he called in the cavalry.

By the time the crime scene unit left, we had close to a dozen of our friends at our home. They swept up glass and helped clean finger-printing dust from all our surfaces (not easy!). They stayed with us all day. They watched movies with us until we felt safe enough to fall asleep in our bedroom. They came and checked on us the next day and sent texts, food, and support.

These friends jumped right into action because they were more than friends. They were our family.

We had moved to Nashville six years earlier knowing almost no one. Through our church, we found a group of people and we became a small group. During those years, this group evolved in ways we could never have predicted. This was our first introduction to adult friendship that lived out the hospitality of a family.

Our little group helped each other financially. We built porches together. Babysat for free. Vacationed together. We studied Scripture together. We volunteered together. We hosted game nights and birthdays. We wept over miscarriages, lost jobs, and family trauma. It was no shock to Mike or me when they came to our home on that dreadful morning.

But that morning was also the first time it really occurred to me that those beloved friends were actually family, living out the gospel together. We did not have any relatives nearby, but that did not mean that we did not need family. These friends, they were our family.

Our little Nashville family of friends had several wonderful years together, but eventually things fell apart. There were divorces, offenses, and just general relocation that finally drew the group to a close. Since then, I have been looking for something like that experience, with little luck.

But the fact that it ever happened in the first place is a miracle. And when we have the joy of building new friendship-to-family opportunities, it will also be a miracle. The Holy Spirit is on the move. God desires that you and I have intimate relationships in communities of gospel remembrance.

We are created for intimacy, and the purpose of these relationships is not to cure our loneliness, but to reveal God and the gospel in an embodied, sanctifying experience of love and grace. Let’s begin together to call our relationships back to the gospel and move forward in the hope that God is working, even now, in our beautiful, messy lives.

Adapted from Knowing and Being Known by Erin F. Moniz. ©2025 by Erin F. Moniz. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com. 

Rev. Erin F. Moniz (DMin, Trinity School for Ministry) is a deacon in the Anglican Church in North America and associate chaplain and director for chapel at Baylor University, where she disciples emerging adults and journeys with them toward healthy, gospel-centered relationships. She is the author of Knowing and Being Known: Hope for All Our Intimate Relationships. She is a trained conciliator, mediator, and conflict coach. She enjoys content creation, playing music, being outdoors, and narrating the inner monologue of her two cats. She lives in Waco, Texas, with her husband, Michael. Connect with Erin on her website https://www.erinfmoniz.com/