Traverse (v): To cross (a mountain, river, sea) in traveling; now esp. to pass or journey across, over, or through; to pass through (a region) from side to side, or from end to end; also, to pass through (a space or solid body), as rays of light, etc.
Liminal (a):Of or pertaining to the threshold or initial stage of a process.
Healing is a ugly business, it's always been, it's also been portrayed as so simple. Just touch a hem, be smeared with saliva sourced mud or hack through a mud/straw ceiling. They left healed or did they? Lazarus was raised, but he smelled of death, wreaked of it - how did he cope with that experience? The lady who touched Jesus hem has spent most of her life ill, so she's healed where's her support, life, family? Did the man who could see really want to see all the ugliness that came with the beauty, was it worth it?
I wonder if we have limited the understanding of healing to a moment, a get up and walk moment, yet we forget the atrophied muscles and a body that does not know what it's experiencing. I've come into this stage of my journey aware and becoming more aware that so what I've ripped a roof open, now I'm exposed in front of a group of people pissed that I've put myself center stage and even worse I've got to fumble myself out of the room, partially healed with numb and tingling legs trying to figure out what it feels like to walk, never mind run, skip or even jump.
In the end we will always be broken whether physically, mentally or emotionally in that because of our sin our bodies do not permit pure forgiveness, we cannot ourselves create a distance east to west wide when it comes to our failures, pain, experiences, but we can be made new in other ways that through God's grace, it's just the accepting it and living with it part...
I can't say I've had a good night's sleep in over a week, or that I haven't had busy days and chaos, and that this week won't be hard on my weak voice - yes the laryngitis has yet to leave me. Out of all this my mom said something on the ride from their place to mine tonight - "You need a husband who loves with a sacrificial love, a love like Christ's, not selfish and self serving." Now my mom knows little to nothing of Three or any of our conversations, but apparently in all her praying He told her something I was unable to see until that moment this evening. While I was continually made to feel emotionally inadequate it was quite the opposite.
I was reading an article in an old Yoga Journal tonight that reiterated what my mom had said. "At first they appear magical, later you realize they have their wounded places and needs and unfinished business they're hoping you'll complete for them." Wow, now that's accurate. So despite the gratuitous post about K, and yes he will as he has always cause the same symptoms for me, I know it's my season to find peace and balance in Him - when the time comes to alter the dynamics, it will work and my life won't seem flooded by chaos and a cacophony of discord, sound and friction.
So I'm off to enjoy my sleep, with a tummy full of partially digested chickpea curry from VWAV and I know that regardless of tomorrow - His mercies are new and He's doing something with this life - looking forward to the glimpses of it - as I know the whole plan I will only see when this life is over.
I've been confronted with the perfect situation and I'm paralyzed - seems to be happening a lot these days - this threshold is not being traversed about I'm about to go all Rosencrantz and Guildernstern but I can't and yet I am them... (*mumbles*). Leah has just informed me Geez is having a contest 30 Sermons You'd Never Hear in Church - it's the perfect situation, my chance to speak in public but not have to deal with all the stress and anguish of being in front of a group of people - in essence blog a sermon. But on what? Something relevant, yet not over discussed, something intriguing but not so out there that is has no commonality - what? Suggestions? My first thought was to go back to my piece for Jesus Week last year - Jesus: Male Chauvanist? But who wants to hear a feminist or even a piece that is in many respects common sense - then again - it is one of the hallmark arguments... Then I was thinking about the war - and pacifism, and then I started to think about the book Nobodies - and the issue of social conscience and slavery, or the Rape of Tamar... The catch to it is it is only 750 words - I've written enough 900 word essays in my 300 level classes to know that they are hard, really hard, worse than 15 page papers. Though if I am super eager I can submit more than one...
So in the spirit of days gone past (when I lived with Steve) - I propose the following: I will buy anyone interested a coffee - and you get to serve as a sounding board, someone to help me bring form to the fog. I'm also looking for an editor? Joel? Does a pecan pie or seafood lasagna sound like enough to tempt you into helping me.
It all started bizarre and went even more bizarre tonight leaving me feeling torn, more emotionally broken and confused. Where to start, how to separate the layers of events.
1. Great is thy Faithfulness - He whispered - oh my Jenn, beloved are you - but what are you doing? Do you not trust me? Will I not provide? I have provisioned work, a warm, dry, safe place to live, a roommate who brings my Truth, my Love, my Grace?
2. The message Matthew - His trial to temptation - because of it we are to believe we are children of God despite no earthly evidence - we must maintain our course when there are no external markers of success... it had me thinking about singleness, about school, about work - am I too reliant on external markers of success - of course I could turn that into a whole blog about the Church - but I know in my life - why am I still sold on the idea that singleness is an external marker of my failure to become that which is desired - to be that which is desired by the world - is that not the last thing I want to be?
3. When I sat down today I saw a face behind the drums - a face I've seen before at Tenth and one I've seen back through the years all the way to the days before grade 2, when I met C and her older brother . Thankfully I was sitting. Here's the long story short - I've always been in awe of him, helps that there was about a 10 year age gap between us. Regardless of that I started volunteering at W, now 3 1/2 - 4 years ago for various reasons - one to get to know him (he was a youth sponsor) - he's always represented to me what I was looking for if I had to be super picky - smart, talented (drums etc), charismatic, funny, warm and yet respected - that presence in a room that demands respect through his humility, and God centered heart - oh did I mention he's a Mennonite and can play ROOK. I talked to him only briefly over that time - the last time I made a complete ass of myself - a bumbling idiot - he's the only man who has and continually reduces me to mumblings, bumbles. So fast forward to last week and I Googled him for some bizarre reason - and found the blog that followed his father's and his journey across Canada on bike - to raise money for his parents - now missionaries in the Ukraine. And there he was tonight - and I couldn't do it - I couldn't say Hi, knowing that only verbal diarrhea would emerge from me, a person so violently convicted about my life - honestly I was more worried that a part of me would force me to do what I am right now - cry.
4. BMMWH was there and I will acknowledge that while his aesthetic is still nice to look at, his behavior today - solidified for me that there is something I need in that one - discernment, leadership and composure because I lack those and so does BMMWH. Well that's all a relief.
5. Leaha's potential blind date guy decided to visit Tenth tonight - she saw him during communion and decided to talk to him - brave girl.
So what's with the crying - the song selection, the whole deal - I started to read Hosea last night and that's where the crying started - to grasp it and listen to the second song - it's painful to know that we continually whore ourselves out in search of something that no worldly person, product or purpose could fulfill. Listen to them- absorb them.
Healing is a ugly business, it's always been, it's also been portrayed as so simple. Just touch a hem, be smeared with saliva sourced mud or hack through a mud/straw ceiling. They left healed or did they? Lazarus was raised, but he smelled of death, wreaked of it - how did he cope with that experience? The lady who touched Jesus hem has spent most of her life ill, so she's healed where's her support, life, family? Did the man who could see really want to see all the ugliness that came with the beauty, was it worth it?
