Brokenness – Upper Room Media Blogs

Eternal Summer

By Sandra; Co-written with Makrina

Original post by Becoming Fully Alive blogsite, 12 Sep 16

Sometimes we think that we are in need of a perfect home with everything neatly in place to show hospitality. And sometimes we think we need a perfect heart that has it all together to invite someone in and build that home. But there are homes we build with our friends not with hands but with conversations of openness and honesty, with the comfort to be as we are, who we are, where we are now. With all our sins and struggles and all our questions and doubts. Sharing death and grief, sex and desire, our needs, deepest inadequacies and regrets. We uncover the demolition in our hearts, unafraid of displaying the rubble, unafraid of leaving the keys to the doors we’ve always locked for someone else to walk in. In the face of each other’s rubble, there is no space for judgement, only the realisation that we all stand on the same levelled ground, a holy ground, where our pain and our struggles are communally felt, without measure, without degrees. Hospitality is the fearlessness to offer others a key into your warzone, and the fearlessness to choose to be present with another.

Many of us were raised strictly associating spiritual growth with the attendance of bible studies, worship evenings, quiet time and locking our bedroom doors in prayer. But there is spiritual growth at 2am at the back of a pickup truck, with seven hearts drawn in laughter and in love. There is growth in 6am swims through the river and in sharing water shoes when the rocks become too harsh beneath your feet. There is growth in conversations over eggs benedict and in sharing the words of people who have previously hurt and condemned us, and the relationships that have left us feeling less than who we are. There is growth in reconnecting with old friends and learning the hearts of new ones, because where there are people, there is God, and that is where we grow and self discover. There is growth in the daily victory of waking up and trying, trying, and trying again. There is growth in struggling through loss to believe that God is good, and there is also growth in firmly believing through the tragedy that God is good.

When we let God out of the man-made spiritual boxes we have created, we need not look far or deep or wide to see His face, but to the heart next to us to realise that He is here. For long we have found Him in foreign mission fields and in retreats, yet now we are awakened to find Him in His people, the church, the home that is built without hands.

After years of living under the weight of expectations and who we “should” be, many of us have locked so many doors of our hearts away for the fear of being known, for fear of being perceived as not spiritual, as not a man or woman of God. When we have tasted the condemnation of a community, labels that silences us, our fears can only be rational and our walk becomes heavy. We were never called to pretend a false state of perfection. We were created in the image of Community for community. A community that is real, that moves from individualism to a place where we can reach out and ask why we’re created in a fallen world or why it’s so hard to hear God’s voice sometimes.

We all naturally gravitate to the community that will accept us for all we bring to the table, so we find ourselves projecting the finished product of ourselves that we believe our community desires so that we can find our home. All the while we live with the fear of truly being known and found out. We live in fear that one day someone will tear down the door to our demolition and see the truth; to see our addictions and the tears that keep us up at night. But Christ was always interested in the real authentic version of ourselves. Christ was never interested in the finished product more than He was in our journey to wholeness. And community was only ever meant to be a place without fear. A place where all we ask is to see with loving eyes, instead of with defence or judgment, the person before us. All of the wonder, grace and godliness lying in the demolition that is yet to be restored. We hope in the yet to come but we love and live the now of each other – no matter how much is taken apart. Hospitality is loving without the need to put it all back together. And hospitality never demands an invite. It waits, it loves, it is patient.

“Maybe we’re all just shiny balls of light inside human machines. Maybe we’re all trying desperately to convince others that the noise they hear coming out of our mouths is an accurate reflection of the intentions of the shiny ball of light inside the machine. Maybe it screams, “I am real in here, I am real in here, I am real here.” Maybe the light inside me just wants to know, if you’re real too.”

-Iain Thomas

Original blog found at- https://www.becomingfullyalive.com/eternal-summer/

What Goes Unheard

By Makrina Williams

Originally seen at goCoptic blog (September 19, 2019)

There is a woman who despises her femininity; loathes any sign of beauty that can welcome trespassers, like the time she was 7 years old. Because he took what was never meant for him, and amongst the broken pieces he shattered, he left her not only hating him, but hating herself too.

Behind her tough exterior, she is beautiful and she is soft. To everyone, she hides her vulnerability and femininity; no one ever thought to look deep into her heart. No one ever thought to ask her why. Instead, they criticize and laugh.

We sit in each other’s presence; ask questions like we are students of each other’s heart. She opens out her beating muscle and shows me every place that it has been pierced. And though there are puncture wounds that cause my body to shut down in anguish, I keep listening, and watch the map of her unfold before my weary eyes.

For we are more than what we choose to display on our surface. We are more than the stories we tell every day. We are all a uniquely precious story.

She asks me what it feels like to live with both my parents.

I tell her the truth; it is both beautiful and painful. Beautiful in the security and love I have always known. Painful because I know a beauty that many people have been robbed of. I tell her that sometimes it hurts and I think it is not fair, that I fight with God, asking why only me. I tell her I wish she had what I had. I tell her I’m sorry.

She tells me he raped her at 7 years old and no one believed her. How he’s still a free man, walks down the same streets as she does, without any punishment. She sees him, but can’t bear the thought or sight of him. She desires to kill him with her own bare hands.

Her father is a polygamist. Aside from her mother, whom he left, he now has two wives. He can afford to pay double of all her needs, yet he does not pay even a tenth. She loves him and she hates him, and she prays that he would know that someone in the world is searching for him. He tells her she’s an adult now, that she has no need of a father. But she looks at me and tells me she craves fatherly affection.

She asks me what it feels like to not be heard.

She asks me what it feels like to be disowned.

I am unqualified to answer. But I ask her right back.

What if we are called to be pursuers of each other’s stories? Instead of living on the surface of each other, caressing only the superficial layers. What if we are to whole heartedly pursue the truth in others, like when Christ met the woman at the well, pursuing her story beyond what people see and know, asking her real questions. Because to Him, the heart matters.

What if this is the real liturgy we are called for; the real work of the people? To hold hands and embrace hearts, to learn the story behind every war, and never let a day fall without calling out the beauty from the ashes left by the wars.

What if this is the real liturgy; witnessing the presence of Christ in everyday life? To behold Him in the man with post-traumatic stress, within the ache of every father wound, amidst the hunger for power and success, more than in the steeple and in the liturgy books?

Sometimes the books, the services, all equate to great things, but what if the Greatest is found on the streets? Like the Mama by the roadside selling fritters, who greets me daily, the woman who cries out for Jesus no matter how intoxicated she is. What if the battle stories, and the scars, those tears and the way they have formed behaviors are the most glorious thing we will ever encounter? Like Christ who lived most of his days not in the synagogues but on the streets, and allowed every interruption to befall him.

What if living lies right here, amidst the stories of love, loss and abandonment. What if these stories are what we are called to pursue?

This here is her story. This is her voice.

True Christian spirituality is not just about “my soul” or the “self.” Spirituality that is Christian is always about taking responsibility for belonging to others, about sharing their concerns, about bearing others’ burdens and washing each other’s feet. – Kevin Irwin, Models of the Eucharist

What can you do?

There are many with her story and others like her.

Of women with a broken past and they try to find their healing in the streets.

There are now over 20 women who work daily and not with their bodies. Some nights they are back on the streets, not to sell themselves again, but to reach out and empower other women. They take food to their sisters on the street, they pray and share the Word of God with them, and encourage them to come and start earning money in a new way. This ministry is now led by these courageous women who chose to leave the street that they may have life.

Sometimes the mission field sounds glamorous and easy, but for many of these women, leaving their former life behind is extremely difficult. After years of quick, easy money and sensual pleasures, it is difficult for them to now deal with the emotional wounds they once masked. Recovery and healing are a long road to walk, and we are so proud of our sisters for choosing to take on this journey.

The need here is greater than ever before, and the devil’s playground is ripe and ready for Gods laborers.

“being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ”
Philippians 1:6

(c) Fr Abraham and Dalia Fam (September 19, 2019). goCoptic. What Goes Unheard by Makrina Williams. Original post – https://gocoptic.org/what-goes-unheard/