Good morning…
It can be hard to re-enter life’s normal rhythm after being swept up into mountaintop moments. Personally, quietly, my re-entry has been rough. Sharing my truth, I found myself texting a friend in the middle of the night.
“I am taking my time re-entering the rhythm of life following our ten day trip through Israel,” I shared honestly. “So many people are facing tough challenges. Quiet, sad endings. Cancer treatment ravaging my dear friend’s daughter. A friend of our young adult son struggling for life in the ICU. A birth three months early leaves a two pound little person in the NICU, my heart goes out to this first time mom. A cancer battle of an old friend who is fiercely independent. Will the 17-year-old receive the kidney he desperately needs? A sudden death of a 53-year-old person to whom I am peripherally connected. So many are grieving loved ones. My mom’s slow recovery from an accidental fall and her subsequent surgery. The ugly war raging on, devastating the lives of so many innocent, ordinary people. It all feels very hard and heavy.”
“When I was in Israel with our small friendly group of twenty-four, I unplugged from most communications back home,” I admitted. “Feasting effortlessly on fresh Mediterranean food generously prepared by others each day, I lived in the moment right in front of me. Returning home now, I am trying to find my balance amid all of the overwhelming needs which stretch my tender heart in tons of different directions. I said to a friend earlier in the week, ‘I feel like a prayer magnet. It is both a powerful privilege and a beautiful burden.'”
In these wee hours, I sit still with God, feeling both privileged and burdened.
Wisdom slowly returns to me from our study of Paula D’Arcy’s Winter of the Heart: Finding Your Way Through the Mystery of Grief. I re-read to myself these grounding words I read aloud in class this week.
“The questions that arise can be overwhelming, and they are not easily sorted,” writes Paula on page 14. “They awaken us in the middle of the night and early in the morning, and haunt us during the day. We wish that a really wise individual would spontaneously appear to give us the answers. But no one has our answers. They have to arise from within us, and that takes time… When confronted with deep brokenness and the tremendous weight and force of pain, many fully surrender to God for the first time. Ken Wilber writes, ‘Practice the wound of love . . . Real love hurts; real love makes you totally vulnerable and open; real love will take you far beyond yourself.’ Because there is nowhere else to turn, we may open up to divine love as we never have before.”
“He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge,” says Psalm 91:4.
Paula asks, “Are you open to seeing God in this way now? If you are not, that is okay.”
“If we listen through our broken heart, love can gently point the way to a deeper understanding of how human life contains both darkness and light,” concludes Paula. “At some point we realize that we still have choices: We will either open our hearts to be healed, or we will close down to avoid the pain.”
In these dark, quiet moments, I feel myself surrender again. I choose to open my heavy laden heart. I envision my overwhelmed self tucked beneath God’s pinions, finding refuge beneath wide, protective wings. I lean into the rhythm of God’s healing heartbeat. Taking with me a jumble of prayer, I release each one into God’s loving care.
…Sue…
