Summer meditation

 

As we are leaning in and listening to the story/stories that contributed to the recipe of your life, it can evoke and provoke feelings of frustration about ourselves and others.  Many of us think, “Shouldn’t I be further along by now?”  Never mind we might not be clear on where we are going or who exactly is measuring the supposed progress.  In Systems Theory, there is a helpful reminder that you cannot control the weather pattern in another person’s soul.  At best you can only try to understand, observe, be aware and awake to the weather in our own soul.  What are you feeling today?  Maybe you’ve realized that one of the messages you received as a youth was to push down your emotions, that you were not given permission to feel what you felt then and still believe you cannot feel your feelings today.  This can be complex and contradictory.  We can feel both love and ache from people we love.  We can say, at the same time, “They did the best they could.  And I wished it would have been different.”  All this is true.  God holds your story with all its blessings and bruises.  We will get to the most difficult questions of why God didn’t intervene or interrupt the moments of brokenness, why pain is part of life, and why God doesn’t swoop in and save us.  (Spoiler alert ~ we don’t know…but humans still want to state confidently that we figured this out.)   The truth is that others wound us and love us.  God invites us to feel this (Psalm 42:7 says, “Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.”).  God isn’t afraid of emotions; God enters what we carry.  The truth is that sometimes we keep attending to the pain as the fuel that feeds our lives in unhelpful ways.  Rob Bell recently said, “There are moments you keep punching yourself in the face and then looking for the fist.”  I know it is a bit startling of a statement, but the image will stick with you.  Today, be honest about the heartbreak in your life, those sharp shards of life that didn’t work out according to your planning and plotting.  You may want to write these down.  Then, let the depth of your soul be held in the depth of God’s unconditional and unceasing love.  Amen.