I really enjoy listening to a band my teenage children have introduced me to. Imagine Dragons. There's a richness, depth, passion and reality of life in their lyrics and the way they express themselves musically. Roots, is a song that sticks with me often of late. "I know it's gotta go like this, I know Hell will always come before you grow". Life holds difficulties. Trouble of various kinds. I don't always get things right in my relationships. Family, friends, colleagues. I don't always do well by others. And sometimes no matter how much I hold out respect, appreciation or valuing - or at least think I am - it is sometimes kicked back in my face. Well . . . . it feels like it. And then there are times when this is the reality on many different fronts, with many different places. And you feel like you are simply - well, in hell. Going back to our roots. Back to nothing, back to holding out nothing, back to having nothing to lose. Stripped bare to only the beating of your heart, and the breathing of your lungs. |
Here we have a choice. Always we have a choice. We can chose to be victims of our own circumstance. Or we can chose to gently and carefully learn. We can chose to lean into the pain of life, to live in the place of what feels like hell, and find ourselves growing. Or we can chose to give up, or remain unchanged, to put blame elsewhere all the time, not own it. We can chose to take the risk of utter failure, utter vulnerability - nothing to defend, nothing to justify, nothing to hold, and find ourselves in new spaces of growing. Or not . . . . .
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This lonely dark walk can be a healing one. A calming one. It opens me to a deep vulnerability within myself, and an honesty I have to face. My deepest, most inner fears that I don't want to face about me, are there blindingly obvious - all because I stepped over a boundary. I have to own that. I have to take responsibility for it. I have to face that deep vulnerability.
So I went for a walk . . . . and I didn't know what to do. Except to say "I'm sorry" . . . .
To wrestle with human doubt, and strength of what has not yet let go within. To wrestle with what makes little sense, but brings about a spark of the gifts of God being ignited in the soul. To share that wrestling with a young person in their faith journey. Together wrestling, discerning, praying, leaning into the heart of God to listen . . . .
when its banks cannot contain its torrent. At what point is this creek "full"? At what point is this creek not a creek and not being what it is? Is it a creek only when there is water or is it still a creek when the bottom is bone dry?
Sometimes as humans, we are bone dry, we are barely a trickle. Sometimes we are so strong and bubbly that we can barely be contained. At what point are we fully who we need to be? Do we ever not be fully who we need to be? If God calls us to a full life, what does that really look like? |
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