Longing

This week I have been sitting with the image of Jesus on the beach with his disciples after his resurrection.  He invited them to sit around the fire, rest and eat with him.  It is an amazing image of warmth, love and communion with Him.  As I place myself around that fire I feel a powerful need to drink deeply of this type of offering and yet I feel challenged to receive it.  Sometimes when I feel this in need, this vulnerable, I also tend to feel fear.  It is a fear of being hurt, fear of being violated, fear of being rejected.  This morning I found myself going to a place in my memory when I felt this in need, this vulnerable and yet safe, loved. 

Every once in a while I allow myself to travel far back into my memories and find myself curled up on the couch next to my dear Auntie Lil.  As I close my eyes I can still feel the warmth of her hand on my forehead.  I can hear the ping of the rings on her hand as they rubbed up against each other.  I can feel the distinctive rhythm of her fingers as she stroked my hair.  Even as I write these words my body aches with longing as the hot tears flow down my cheek.  Never once did I question my Auntie Lil’s love for me.  Never once did I feel my safety threatened or fear rejection. These moments of time brought unique opportunities to feel deeply loved and protected just as I was. 
 

Many times over the last ten years, these experiences have come to mind as I have tried to grasp how deep and how wide God’s love is for me.  In my reflection of these unique times with my Aunt, I have become more open to receive God’s perfect and tangible love.  However, I think that today, it is the very small child in me that needs to understand and receive this love and yet it is the very small child that feels so vulnerable and in danger.  So this morning, I ask that God would allow the child within me to receive His love through the very heart and hands of the one with whom she felt safe and protected.  I invite Him into these sacred spaces that I believe He provided for me so that this small child might receive all that God desired for her.  I feel nothing less than His blessing as I place this request before Him.  

Thank you Father for meeting me where I am and being willing to love me in ways that I am able to receive.  Amen

The Blood of Christ-Then and Now

This morning as I sit in reflection of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, I am reminded of a previous post.  It felt important to bring out these words again and then consider what they mean to me now.

As I continue to sit with the image of the sinful woman from the gospel of Luke I have found myself coming face to face with the sin in my own life.  Sin that has been thrust upon me, sin that has come out of my own woundedness and my sin in choosing to keep all of it from the one True Healer.  As I step into this awareness, I see myself draped in a filthy, beaten and torn shawl of shame.  For years, I have allowed this shawl to cover me, to be my hiding place.  Now, however as I am present to this piece of my journey, as God has prepared me to be, I am beginning to see new movement.  I hear Christ beckoning me to the cross even as my shawl of shame is draped over my head, my eyes gazing down.  As I approach the cross, I fall to my knees.  Lifting my hands to wrap my fingers around the base of the cross that my Savior is hanging from, I cling to the hope that is there.  The blood from His wounds drips down His beaten body and off His feet, falling on my covered head.  As this drop of blood touches my shawl of shame, by the power, love and grace of Christ alone, it begins to dispel the filth and the shame, replacing it with a dazzling white.  This white slowly bleeds into the rest of my covering as God’s transforming truth penetrates and conquers the sin and lies that I have lived out of for so long.    

Now, over two years after first writing these words I find that they still feel raw and real.  I am still that broken person in need of healing, the unlovable in need of love, the sinner in need of forgiveness.  I am also aware that I have not always stayed at the foot of the cross where such transformational work is done.  Often I turn my head and move away.   If I am to be completely honest I would have to admit that it is fear that pulls me away.  Fear of the truth, fear of exposure, fear of vulnerability.  What I know is that God is bigger than my fear as He gently and continually invites me back.  Each time I return to Him, His healing goes a little deeper, His love spreads a little farther and my shawl becomes a little brighter.  Today I feel so thankful that God has not required me to clean myself up before I come to Him-an impossible task.  Rather, He invites me to come as I am and simply be open to receive His perfect and transforming love.  Lord, may my heart be open to you this day and may I “approach the throne of grace with confidence so that [ I might ] receive mercy and find grace.” Hebrews 4:16

Alone in the crowd

I have been sitting with this picture as the background for my computer screen for some time now.  I was struck instantly by it but was unsure why.  As I look at it I see one bird in the midst of many other birds and yet separated, alone.  I often feel like that one bird as I am aware that though I am surrounded by people that care about me, I feel very much alone.  Some of that loneliness comes out of a felt sense that flows from the streams running deep within my heart and back into the early years of my life.  Though this loneliness is of the past, I find myself perpetuating this feeling in my current day to day life through unconscious and even conscious actions that keep others at a safe distance and isolate myself in my journey.  Do I feel like I deserve to be alone?  Do I fear that others won't want to be with me if they know who I am?  These are some of the questions that I am asking of myself.  As I reflect on all of this, I also pause to consider what my earliest experience of loneliness was like.

As I begin to listen to and validate the traumatic responses that still exist in my body today, they paint a sobering picture of my experience of sexual abuse. As an adult, I am challenged to take in the images and sensations that come with this picture.  As an adult, I have found it quite difficult to share this picture with even my most trusted friends. I find myself wondering what it might have felt like to be a young child trying to figure out what to do with these very experiences.  How do you interpret them?   How do you live in them? How do you hold them all by yourself in a time of life when your greatest concern should be who might you play with that day?  I see a young child walking through her life with an outward appearance of health and happiness yet on the inside is experiencing a raging, torturous battle that she must face alone.  That seems to me to be the very definition of loneliness.  Some time ago I was struck by two simple lines in a song.  "Does anybody see her?  Does anybody hear?"  These lines went deep into my soul as I seemed to identify with those questions.  I find myself asking that question again today.  "How could no one have known?"

As I was sitting with all of this, I found myself asking how can God meet me in this loneliness that seems to run at the very core of my being?  Unaware of why, a recent experience came to mind.  One afternoon, not that long ago, I was in a particularly painful place.  I knew I needed to go into the ministry center that I work at to complete a project so I did.  Generally, I am able to mange my struggle in a way that minimizes how it is displayed over my face and body.  This day however, I seemed unable to do so.  There was not a person in the office that day who was not aware that I was in the midst of a deep and painful struggle.  In the very nature of our community, I was not questioned but acknowledged. I was not ignored but seen. I was not pressed but invited.  In my willingness to be seen, my experience from others that afternoon was of compassion, awareness and presence in the midst of my pain. It seems that God began to answer my question before I even asked it. I believe that God can and will reformat my brain and the way I experience my story through spaces and experiences such as this.  I believe that if I allow Him, He will restore the years the locusts have eaten so that I may know that He is the Lord my God.