Stability and Movement

Wow you should see outside today! The Oregon sky is Carolina blue with not a cloud in sight. Everything seems more vibrant, more itself somehow.

One of my girlfriends and I have been talking about what it means to be fully oneself. It seems to boil down to a commitment to be who we were created to be in Christ and as individuals within His body. It is a lifelong process rather than a milestone moment in time. It involves taking risks we would rather not take, feeling and experiencing things we would prefer not to live through, accepting the present as it is, and hoping for things we would rather not be disappointed about in the future, which sometimes feels like the biggest risk of all. It also involves being surprised by joy and overwhelmed by God's loving care along the way, whether those hopes are fulfilled as we had envisioned, answered in some other way, or apparently dashed.

Last night was rough. I barely slept although I was worn out from a long week of trying to slip back into the flow of work more completely. The restlessness in my body was off the charts. It was my first night in a while trying to sleep without pain meds. I had stepped down the dose to a single pill per day, and it was time for me to drop that last pill. It never occurred to me that it would be hard to sleep without the pain pill. Over the past four weeks I have developed what for me is a very effective, soothing nighttime routine. My MD from Boulder would say that I have "excellent sleep hygiene." Apparently there are times when excellent sleep hygiene isn't worth spit.

This morning I had a movement workshop to attend. Cards on the table, I would have blown it off because of being wretchedly sleep deprived if not for the fact that it was session 4 of 5 sessions prepaid months ago. To the workshop I went. I tried to psych myself up by telling myself that maybe the movement would build irrepressible energy in my body and leave me feeling wonderfully refreshed. That idea, also, wasn't worth spit. Halfway through the movement portion of the program my body stopped moving. I just couldn't go anymore. I stepped out the studio door and down the hall to the ladies' room. I prayed a desperate little prayer to God. Honestly, I can't remember at this moment exactly what I said to Him. What I know for sure is this: Lately I have been praying for Him to bring to light any hidden bitterness, anger, resentment, or unconfessed sin in me so that He can clean and bind the wounds and by His grace heal me. When I walked back into the studio and took my place on the dance floor now barely able to move again I felt Him remind me of that prayer and then question me, "Child, you've asked me to deal with all these things, but what about your fears?" It was too much. I began to cry. Not wracking sobs of pain but tears of relief and possibly of shame at having tried to keep hidden from Him once again what He already knows. So by His grace I named the fears He brought to mind, one by one, laying them at the foot of the cross.

I told my Abba, our Abba, that I am afraid that I will not get well. I told Him I am afraid that my health will keep getting worse. I told Him that I am afraid I will lose the movement that He has given me back over the last year, the movement that has brought my heart such sheer delight. I told God that I am afraid that I will never have a family this side of Heaven, and that I will always feel alone. I told Him that I am afraid if I let people see the real me that they will pity me. Abba calmed my heart and helped me surrender those fears - built up over many years, deeply rooted in the scarred soil of an unhealthy youth - in a matter of minutes! It is true what Scripture says about God's perfect love casting out fear, praise Him!

I prayed and cried my way through the last half of the workshop. The fact that I cried silently in public without feeling devastating shame, incidentally, is a minor miracle itself, hard evidence of God's healing hand on my life. In the home I grew up in it was dangerous to cry. Crying even at home but most especially in public - even at funerals - invited punishment, including the infliction of physical pain. Because of the dread of those consequences crying took on the feeling of dying for me. For years it felt as though if I allowed myself to shed a single tear I would be consumed or devoured by all the pent up grief and pain. In those years if I cried a single tear it turned to heaving sobs which left me feeling as though I would never breathe normally again. Praise God, He did not leave me in that emotionally paralyzed place.

Today, having dried my tears but made no effort at concealing them, I had nothing to say during the workshop debriefing when the facilitator asked the group how we had experienced stability and movement in our bodies during the dancing. Having continued my conversation with Abba since then, however, I have arrived at this thought: Jesus Christ is our stability, and God's Holy Spirit is our movement. Nothing I ever do or experience will change Christ's sacrifice for me or my identity in Him. Everything I do or experience has hope in it because His Spirit is continually at work in me, refining me and remaking me so that I am more and more like Him. Jesus cried in public, too, you know. More than once. And when He cried He always talked to Abba, too.