The Journey to Wholeness

I was going through my email today trying to figure out which email of the 20 that I need to send I would send today, when I came across an old email from a friend of mine.  As I re-read all that she had written I realized that exactly what she was writing several months ago is exactly where God is taking me right now.  The problem is, I’m not being all that cooperative.  Part of me wants to and I know that deep down it is the very thing I long for, but something in me continues to hold onto my fears and lies I have been told, rather than taking hold of the truth set before me.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?  So since she so eloquently described my plight in her own, here is some of what she wrote.
“The first is an image I am trying to meditate upon more often than anything else and that is the image of Christ sitting with me in my pain.  In reading Wolterstorff's book 'Lament for a Son' I read: I have always heard that nobody can look at the face of God and live.  I always thought that was because nobody could see His splendor and live.  A friend once suggested it was because nobody could see His sorrow and live.  Or maybe His sorrow is His splendor.
Thinking, imagining Christ sitting with me, grieving with me, being angry or heart-broken with me over the things that are so wrong in the world...it changes the way I feel about pain.  It doesn't change the pain.  In fact, most times it makes it more acute when I am faced with such brokenness yet am called to wait in that brokenness for God to move in and sustain me.  It is a struggle for which I feel too much of a coward to engage in every day:  wrestling with the deep ambivalence of wanting desperately to be free from pain but knowing that the way to true life leads me straight through it.
The first is an image I am trying to meditate upon more often than anything else and that is the image of Christ sitting with me in my pain.  In reading Wolterstorff's book 'Lament for a Son' I read:
I have always heard that nobody can look at the face of God and live.  I always thought that was because nobody could see His splendor and live.  A friend once suggested it was because nobody could see His sorrow and live.  Or maybe His sorrow is His splendor.
Thinking, imagining Christ sitting with me, grieving with me, being angry or heart-broken with me over the things that are so wrong in the world...it changes the way I feel about pain.  It doesn't change the pain.  In fact, most times it makes it more acute when I am faced with such brokenness yet am called to wait in that brokenness for God to move in and sustain me.  It is a struggle for which I feel too much of a coward to engage in every day:  wrestling with the deep ambivalence of wanting desperately to be free from pain but knowing that the way to true life leads me straight through it.  My tears are part of who I am.  They have to come with me.  They ARE me.  They let me know I am alive.  In God's confusing and inconceivable methods, they even bring comfort.  And when I honestly face the reality of them, they bring wholeness.”  God  may you grant me the strength to trust you enough to embrace the blade of sanctification, to enter into my pain and find the wholeness that you promise.

Comments

[Carolyn Prahl]

Jenn, thank you for reminding me of where I should be going. Honestly, the thoughts described in this letter feel so far removed from me. But, I am challenged to read them again and recognize where God has taken me and where He calls me to go. I hope He reminds you and sustains you in the same way.

[Leslie]

hmm...