Holding Multiple Truths

“You can hold multiple truths, Abby.”

Someone said those words to me a few months ago.

I had never heard it described quite like that before, and something about those words struck me.

Holding multiple truths.

It came back up yesterday while talking with a friend, and as I began sharing more of my heart, I realized how beautifully those words describe the way I have learned to live.

And maybe even what Paul meant when he said, “I have become all things to all people.”

To meet people where they are.

To give them space to be where they are.

To enter their world without losing yourself in it.

So what does it mean to hold multiple truths?

For me, it doesn’t mean I believe everything everyone else believes.

It doesn’t mean I abandon my own truth to make room for yours.

I’m deeply anchored in what I believe and in my own journey with God.

But maybe that’s exactly why I don’t need you to believe what I believe.

Holding space for your truth doesn’t mean I have to hold it as mine.

I can give you space to be exactly where you are on your journey.

I don’t have to convince you.

I don’t have to correct you.

I don’t have to push my beliefs onto you.

I don’t have to make you wrong in order to feel secure in what I believe.

I can listen. I can lean in. I can meet you right where you are.

And I can love you there.

I let God be God, and I just shine the light.

That’s it.

I trust God with your heart. I trust God with your journey. I trust God to do whatever God wants to do within you without me trying to manufacture it.

My job is simply to love.

And I mean everyone.

Not just the people who believe like me.

Not just the people who live like me.

Not just the people whose choices I understand.

Everyone.

I wasn’t always able to live this way.

There were things in my own heart—fear, judgment, self-righteousness, legalism—that kept me from loving people as freely as I thought I did.

And God didn’t free me from those things by condemning me into transformation.

Love did it.

I experienced the love of God over and over again, and as I allowed that Love to saturate my heart, things began falling away.

Fear.

Judgment.

The need to be right.

The need to change people.

And underneath all of it, I discovered freedom.

Beautiful, expansive freedom.

Maybe that’s why I believe so deeply in the power of simply loving people now.

Because when someone encounters genuine love—love without an agenda, love that isn’t secretly trying to fix them, love that doesn’t disappear when they reveal something we don’t understand—they feel it.

They feel safe.

And sometimes, in that safety, things that have been tightly held begin to loosen.

Hearts open.

Walls come down.

And God gets to do what only God can do.

I don’t have to force any of it.

Maybe this is what becoming “all things to all people” has come to mean to me.

I can enter another person’s world. I can listen to their language. I can meet them where they are without losing who I am.

I can stand firmly on the ground beneath my own feet while giving you room to stand on yours.

And if you don’t believe any of this?

That’s okay too.

That’s the beauty of it.

This is my journey. My truth. The way I have learned to live.

You don’t have to agree with me for me to love you.

And if you’re leaning in because you want this kind of freedom too—the freedom to lay down judgment, fear, division, self-righteousness, and the need to be right—I’ll gladly share what I’ve learned along the way.

But I won’t force you to come.

I’ll just keep walking it.

I’ll keep shining the light.

I’ll keep letting God be God.

And I’ll keep doing the thing He whispered into my heart all those years ago:

Just love.

Be Love. Give Love.

And let Love do what only Love can do.

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Part of the Breadcrumbs collection by Abby Lewis—true stories that gently invite us into a different way to live.

Continue reading: Teach Me to Love, where I share the prayer that began this journey of learning to love without division.