Good morning…
My feelings were hurt. After I had prayed diligently for the months leading up to our second “Awake To Wellness Retreat,” after I had left my family behind to travel from Atlanta to Orlando, after we had passionately provided a day of music and teaching, poems and prayers, videos and stories about the life of Christian mentor Betty Skinner, at the end of the day a well-dressed woman stopped me and asked, “So, why were you here?”
I felt like the scrawny, naked tree in the center of the opening photo of today’s post, surrounded by the brilliance of the brain research presented by Dr. Cathy Snapp, the personal, profound Betty-stories of co-author Kitty Crenshaw, and the magical, mesmerizing piano music of deep-souled Dana Cunningham. In response to this stranger’s “So, why were you here?” I felt unseen, unneeded, unwanted.
But she asked, so I answered. I told her I had collaborated with Kitty, Cathy, and a wonderful team of women in Atlanta to conceive of and to birth the first “Awake To Wellness Retreat” last spring. When the second retreat opportunity arrived, I felt spurred by the Spirit to offer my prayers and my presence, to help in any way the authors saw fit. I was given the privilege of prayerfully reading aloud Betty’s deep, piercing poems. Had this woman not heard me pour out my tear-streaked soul through Betty’s wounding words?
******
Oh, Good Jesus, by Betty Skinner, in Crenshaw and Snapp’s The Hidden Life Awakened (26)
Oh, Good Jesus,
Hear me, hold me, love me
in this, the season of my spirit’s loss and grieving,
in the anguish of my waiting,
in the silence of familiar voices gone,
in the pain of all the change,
in the twilight of my years
before perfection dawns
and I am gone.
Oh, Good Jesus,
I try the letting go,
to understand my weakness,
to trust You in my darkness,
to make room for Your grace to heal.
Yet there is no return,
only the echo of my own crying.
It seems I, too, with You,
am caught between the nails.
Oh, Good Jesus,
In this holy place of crucifixion,
Broaden the boundaries of my heart.
Soften the places that defend, define, and deny.
Teach my heart to love
Make it a refuge for others
who, too, are caught between the nails.
******
After our brief conversation, this woman’s question morphed into my prayer, “God, why was I here?”
To broaden the boundaries of my heart. To soften the places that defend, define, and deny. To teach my heart to love. To make it a refuge for others who, too, are caught between the nails (unseen, unneeded, unwanted by well-dressed strangers, but well-seen, well-needed, well-wanted by our living LORD.)
“Pay close attention now: I’m creating new heavens and a new earth. All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain are things of the past, to be forgotten. Look ahead with joy. Anticipate what I’m creating…” (Isaiah 65:17-18a, MSG).
…Sue…
P.S. Thank you, Gina MacFarland, for this gorgeous fall photo taken in Black Mountain, North Carolina.
