Dungeons and Dragons Became my Ministry

Growing up during the Satanic Panic, I knew three things about Dungeons and Dragons: people played it in the dark, there were demons involved, and kids died.

It turns out people play around brightly lit tables, the only demons involved are the ones we defeat, and friends do die...inside the game. Like in checkers. Christians, of all people, should know that facing death, even in stories, can make you better at life.

Dungeons and Dragons has become my ministry.

A typical first session starts with strangers, usually other women from local Army support group Facebook groups, arriving at my apartment door. I greet them with my baby on my hip, welcome them inside, offer them cookies. They're usually nervous, find their seats around my coffee table while I hand out colorful dice in little tupperware with weapons written on the top. "These are the dice for your short sword, these are the dice for your long bow..." Sheets of paper are examined. One new player's character is good at talking to animals; another can heal wounds by laying on hands.

When everyone is comfortable and I've downed a cup of coffee, I pass around a cloth bag and let each woman choose a bracelet from inside. "Congratulations." The girl with the bangle is the much-contested crown princess they've sworn to protect. The two with matching bracelets are twins. Strangers stare at each other.

And I plunge them into the story.

"You've been tracking a monster through the night as it passed through the border of your tribe's lands moving toward the human settlements. As the sun rises, the tracks disappear into a stream."

Within five minutes, strangers are plunging into danger to help each other, laughing at ridiculous choices and silly moments, gasping as they incur imaginary wounds. Within three hours, they're shouting "FOR MY SISTER!", talking to imaginary people without shame and deciding what kind of heroes they'll be in this little world we've made.

When I finish, I ask, "Do you want to do this again?" No one has ever said no.

I believe in the power of stories to give us practice in being brave, to give us chances to make hard decisions while they're a little bit easier. I believe in the power of stories to let us feel who we want to be.

And I believe in the power of adrenaline, of doing something ostensibly silly but doing it together, to teach people they can trust each other. I've gone to coffee, I've gone to lunch, but a DnD circle will randomly switch from fighting a monster to sharing notes about abuse or difficult events in a way coffee dates never did. Hurting people find a sisterhood of women who care and listen and help them fight monsters. 

Not every game I run is going to be a therapy session. Sometimes it's just a story, just a chance for people to get together and laugh and do something hard. But creating that safe space? Creating that chance for people to get out of themselves and into who they want to be? That's worth every hour.

Dungeons and Dragons is the way I have to love people, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Setting Fire to Bridges

My heart was aching. My whole chest hurt. And I seethed with rage and frustration as my mother told me not to burn bridges.

When your heart is broken and a friendship is soaked with gasoline, sending out that spark seems so right. It seems like a conflagration is the thing you need to make you okay. It feels like keeping that connection is keeping an IV drip of pain whether you can see them or not. A "friend" had hurt me, and I wanted her gone.

Have you been here? Have you, like me, seethed in wounded anger and clenched the matches in your fist?

Have you felt like the only way to honor your pain is to set fire to your friendships? Words like my mom's lash like whips, like all the love in the world is just more gasoline. I held back my spark, but I told her she was wrong. I would never want that friend, ever, ever, ever.

Two years later, when I was at my most frightened, I asked that girl to hold my baby. 

I'm not the girl with the matches anymore. I'm the woman who's seen people who called me freak reach out with their hearts. I'm the girl who's seen bullies who broke me become heroes I lean on. I'm the girl who keeps bridges when all the hope seems gone, because with what I've seen, I know I can't make that call.

There are times and places to light the match on a friendship, but they are so much rarer than I thought. And there are people who seemingly drift away forever, but my wizened old-lady 26-year-old self can tell you that many, so many, come back.

So whether you throw the gasoline or disappear without a trace, I hope you know I like you. And when we meet down the road with more adventures and more understanding, I'll be glad to see you again.

I haven't burned our bridges. They're still waiting.

(Except you, creepy jury-duty man. You remain with all the men I've judged unsafe in the "See you in heaven, talk to someone else" zone. Good luck.)