Sometimes, a Quiet Time

Sometimes you have to get quiet and listen to the sound of your soul breathing.

Earlier today, I was reminded of a recent, lengthy and very challenging period in my life. During that time, I discovered there were many people in my life who were untrustworthy, and I felt stung by their deceitful behavior.

It can be crazy-making to be in a situation where you repeatedly face frequent criticism and back-stabbing. I'm grateful to have left that environment, and disappointed to discover that the environment has not fully left me.
The reminder today caused a lot of bitterness to float to the surface of my consciousness.

The effects of poisoning do not always dissipate when the poison is removed. It will take time and effort to genuinely get past what I experienced, especially since I am only now realizing how deep the wounds ran.

So, what do we do when we are in that position?

We grieve. We grieve the potential that was never realized, the friendships that were not really there, the dark motives that greed creates; we grieve it all.

Some people think my choice to follow Jesus as my Savior is a shallow and foolish decision. They see Him as a teacher, a prophet, and a wise man, but they don't feel a need to see Him as or have a Savior. They are independent and capable of addressing God on their own, and they view me as less evolved because I rely upon my Lord.

I may indeed be less evolved. In fact, I would go so far as to say I am broken. In some theologies or cosmologies or philosophies, that is tantamount to heresy. We are not broken, we are perfect!

I don't know. I don't feel so perfect. If you feel that way, I'm happy for you.

I just feel human, and in my humanness today I have felt a bit blue.

Jesus says to me, "I know how it feels. You hear the same people who cheered you one week shouting the next week for Barabbas's release and your crucifixion."

Jesus did this extraordinary thing. In the middle of that crucifixion and torturous death sentence, He forgave his enemies. Forgave them! Proclaimed them ignorant of what they were doing.

I'm not there. I'm not ready to forgive people who have hurt me for their hypocrisy and their love of being a bully. I'd like to say I can and have, but then, today, the emotional acid reflux gets triggered by a simple comment and I know I have not done it.

That inability to love is my shortcoming in the deal. I have been on both sides of the coin. I have been the hateful, hypocritical person, and I have been the unsuspecting victim. I don't know how to resolve it from either side.

All I can do is nail my part to the cross, nail their part on the other side, and go through Jesus to find that reconciling place. My friends who don't need a Messiah have other approaches, but this is the only one I've found that I can return to time and again. It is bloody, dirty, messy, dusty and chaotic on my side of the cross. It isn't scripted or pretty, and I am bloody, dirty, messy, dusty and chaotic because I am caught up in the situation.

Yet, once I have nailed it in place, accepted my own messiness, and trusted that Jesus can reconcile it somehow, the world stops moving, the storm stops raging, the shouting grows quiet, and a peace I cannot understand begins to fill me. All of the sounds fall away, the raging, the crying, the accusations and counter-accusations, the anger, the sarcasm, the lies, all of it just fades to silence.

And in that silence I hear the sound of my soul's breath, the steady thrum of my soul's heartbeat, the eternal quiet of love.

I don't know what is happening on the other side of the cross. I have been drawn into the heart of Jesus, the Sacred Heart. From there, the pain and sorrow are silenced, and I float within an embryonic peace. In my woundedness, I have entered into the heart of God through God's own wound.

I clamor for justice, I shout for recognition, I gather witnesses to my own righteousness, I cry and rend my garments. I want balance restored, and by that I mean, I want to be the one on top.

When my woundedness finally leads me to enter that Sacred Wound, I discover what I really want is calm. I want to feel loved, that's all.

I'm grateful to have my Wounded God. God dared to be vulnerable to us by giving us free will.

So I run to the wounds, to the place where I can slip inside God in my brokenness.

There, in the quiet, I hear my soul begin to breathe.

This is How It Feels to Be Held

I prayed tonight about my friend who's light is flickering. I think I will go by tomorrow and visit him between our church services.

Sometimes I still wrestle with God over how things are not in my control, how even though I am linked with the God of All Creation, Etc., I still don't get to call all the shots. Another soul is on its own trajectory, and I have been invited to walk alongside for a few brief steps. I can't change anything except I can change everything. I can offer one more heart than he had before.

There was a time in my life when the circumstances of ministry made this a common experience for me, for years. It has been awhile, and in the meantime I have grown older, more aware of how precious a soul is, how fleeting life is. And in the last couple of years I have seen three friends I loved, one whose presence I cannot remember being without in my life, move on.

For reasons also not in my control, God gave me a gift to love this new friend. As a result, I'm sad that we will likely not have much more time together on this side of the veil.

It doesn't seem to matter whether it is a friend I have loved all my life or one whom I met recently but who has touched my heart; there is grieving involved. Grieving is the field where the mortal and eternal meet. Some rending is required both on the part of the one leaving and those left behind. The illusion is that a connection will be severed. The truth is that the connection will be stronger. It just takes a while to get to that understanding, and head-knowledge of it is of no use. The heart must figure it out.

It helped me tonight to listen repeatedly to Natalie Grant's rendition of the song, "Held," with it's profound chorus:

"This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We'd be held."

As will he. As will I. As will all who have loved him longer than me.

We will all be held.

Blessings,
David