Stillness to Dancing

Just a few months ago, I wrote about my experience with depression.Crippling, life-stealing depression.I wrote how I was choosing to serve God whether or not I ever found healing or relief from depression. How I was choosing to be faithful—or at least trying to be.I shared my experience of the low, the tough, the vulnerable. And then I was silent, on the blog at least.So today I want to share a follow up. I want to share a story of healing and joy and gratitude.I’ve been reluctant to write this post. I don’t want my healing to sound cliché. I don’t want to prescribe a how-to formula for overcoming depression because I know it doesn’t work like that. I don’t want to jinx it.But somehow I’ve come out on the other side and I can’t help but rejoice. I can’t help but share.

I think of my favorite T.S. Eliot quote, “So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

Today I am dancing and I don’t quite know why. Like Allie of Hyperbole and a Half bursting into hysteric belly laughs at a lone kernel of corn, it doesn’t make any sense.For me it started not with a piece of corn, but at the Sea of Galilee, overlooking the waves that Peter once braved.God spoke to me that day. He declared inner peace over my soul. He declared me healed and free.I can’t explain how I heard Him or why I believed that I would be free. I just knew He broke something FREE in me that day. Free from bitterness and wallowing and the chains of depression.I felt the healing work deep in my soul, deep in my bones. So much so that I couldn’t help but dance.Dance?! On the shore of the Sea of Galilee? Alone. Ear buds in. Eyes closed. Hips swaying and hands raised.Like a lunatic. Like someone crazy for Jesus and the healing power he brings.I didn’t feel the healing yet. I hadn’t experienced it yet. But I knew it was time to start dancing over my graves of depression and burnout and disappointment.Dancing became a sign of faithfulness. A way to declare victory before the war was even over.I danced in worship. I danced my praise. I danced for the grace and redemption and renewal I hadn't yet experienced.Nothing else mattered but setting my heart and my body to praising the God who promised to heal me. To love me. To bind my wounds.As I danced, I prayed the chains would be broken. I prayed that my freedom would bring freedom to others.And when the songs were over, my body stilled, I opened my eyes and turned to see a Korean tour group sitting just a few feet behind me, staring at the girl swaying to the music in her earphones, in her head, in her heart.And I didn’t care. I was being healed. I am being healed.Since then joy has found a way to creep in. Little bit by little bit. I began to experience joy in my new grad school classes. Joy at caring for the daily needs of a 94-year-old woman with advanced dementia and one heck of witch cackle laugh. Joy in meeting with my favorite girlfriends on earth to chat and pray and cry and laugh together. Joy in just being.Today I have a lot to delight in-- a new boyfriend and a new kitten for starters (!!). It's taken work, though, don't get me wrong. I've worked hard in counseling, finding the right medication, admitting that I need help. I've prayed and prayed. I've recommitted to taking care of myself.But the healing started that day at the Sea of Galilee. When God whispered something to me, calling me to deep inner peace, silencing my striving like Jesus once silenced the very waves that crashed before me. He declared freedom in me that day.And I danced it. I hope I am dancing it still.

Losing Work and Finding Grace: Lessons from Marginal Employment

I haven't been writing much lately.  I haven't followed through on my goal to share about my peacemaking trip to Israel/Palestine once a week. The words haven't flowed; I haven't really tried.And surprisingly. I'm okay with it.Since I left my job as a writer at Plant With Purpose  nearly two years ago, I've been plagued with the constant guilt that I'm not writing enough, not producing enough, not saving the world enough.But after months and months of thrashing and crying and giving up, I  think I'm beginning to learn the lesson that God has been trying to teach me all along. (And that I thought that I already knew.)I may have lost my words, but I am gaining a new life in Him. An open-handed life.  A life of holding loosely to the labels and identities I used to clutch with greedy palms.In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, burnout and depression, I've discovered God is with me in the waiting. I'm being transformed by the knowledge that I can choose to trust Him in the waiting, in the in-between. (Not that I always do.)Sue Monk Kidd writes in her beautiful memoir, When the Heart Waits, "Hope lies in braving the chaos and waiting calmly, with trust in the God who loves us. For if we wait, we may find that God delivers us somewhere amazing--into a place vibrant with color and startling encounters of the soul."I've tried to wait, but it's not often been calmly and it definitely hasn't been eagerly. Maybe if I type it here--commit it to words, and the action will come easier. I will wait with you, Lord.  Open-handed. Open-hearted.  I will trust that you are delivering me in to something new, something good, something holy. I know it.I taste it already. In the sweet moments in my new caregiving job. In my new excitement for grad school. In the friends who've spoken the words and spilled the grace into me that I've needed to hear so badly.I can taste the sweet. And I can choose the sweet.I can bounce back from job rejection. From disappointment. Even from depression. I look around and I see color. I echo ee cummings in saying,

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings;and of the gay
great happening ilimitably earth)"

I am grateful for the wonder. For the gifts of this day. And I'm trying my best to hold it all oh-so-loosely. Palms unclenched. Open-hearted.

God at the Wall

It’s been a few weeks since my trip with The Global Immersion Project to the Middle East. I’ve shared some of my initial thoughts about the Lives of Unwarranted Compassion I witnessed, along with the realization that this peace process Starts With Me. Now I've moved on to the hard writing--sharing stories.If you've followed this blog for long, you know I'm pretty comfortable (perhaps bordering on too comfortable) writing about myself--my own spiritual highs and lows and faith journey. I find it much harder to write about controversial topics or actually give an opinion about anything. The thought of sharing stories from Israel and Palestine (West Bank?/Occupied Territory--even the name is controversial!) scares me because I don't know where people stand--how much they know about the conflict, what their religious/political/idealogical/eschatological bent may be. I haven't even figured out what I think about all of this. And yet I had the incredible opportunity to actually GO to the Middle East. To meet Jews and Muslims and Christians. To hear about the horrors of the Holocaust from survivors, to meet with present-day Palestinian refugees, to learn from peacemakers who see the peace process as something deeper and more challenging than signing a piece of  paper or hammering out a One- or Two-State solution. We hear so many stories of violence and despair and centuries old conflict in the Middle East that it's easy to get overwhelmed. Before I joined with The Global Immersion Project, I would have turned off the news and thrown my hands up in futility. What could I do anyways? How could I even begin to understand such a entrenched conflict? It's all too much. When I traveled to the Middle East, I met people fully immersed and affected by the conflict. People who don't get to turn off the news and ignore it--even if they'd like to. But for me, the immense magnitude of the conflict was not the most salient point I carried home with me, but the immense magnitude of the hope and the joy and the space for transformation and reconciliation that this conflicts opens up. Since joining with TGIP, I've come to realize that as followers of Christ we're actually called to enter in to conflict to transform it, to make peace, to bring the Kingdom in all its wholeness and glory into the world we live in today.As a staunch conflict avoider, this is terrifying for me.But I feel so honored that I could spend 10 days with peacemakers who are living this out in the most costly and courageous ways, that I can't help but share their stories.I will be writing about issues that may or may not push all the wrong (or right) buttons. At this point I don't even know what's controversial anymore. Wherever you stand, please know first and foremost, I want to share where I personally saw God moving in the Middle East.I want to share the stories that most resonated with my heart. That most pointed to the existence of a God of reconciliation. Whose very heart is to reconcile us to Him. To reconcile us to ourselves, each other. The earth.Well, this was probably way too long of an introduction to my first story that doesn't even need a disclaimer, but oh well, some later posts will. Without further ado, here is my first story of where I saw God moving in Israel.  And I hope to be getting back to posting once a week.

***

The place: The Western Wall, near the Temple Mount, Old Jerusalem. Women rock to their rhythmic prayers. I sit insecure. Fiddling with my hands. Not sure which prayer to whisper. To open or close my eyes. It's not my wall. It's not my tradition.I rack my brain for Torah scriptures. For some monumental verse that will immediately put God in the right perspective."What are you speaking to me?" I ask. "What do you want me to know about the Jewish tradition and what it means for me as a Christian now?"A teenage girl sits a few feet over. She's rocking and murmuring prayers obediently. I feel like an impostor.The rocks of the wall are huge. Not what I had pictured. There are a few rolled prayers tucked into the crevices. But mostly it's just sandy Jerusalem stone staring back at us. Super-sized bricks stacked to the sky.People are rocking, but there's no wailing.I touch the cold wall. Brace myself for the mystic power. This wall that is closest to the where the Holy of Holies was. This wall is the last remnant of the Jewish Temple that dates back to King Herod. I feel reverence. Awe. Not really for the stone, but for the people who experience God this way. For the people who show up day after day to pray. Who live the reality that sometimes God speaks. And sometimes it feels like you're talking to a cold wall.And still they come. The faithful. Like showing up week after week to church. Together. Standing in worship or bowing our heads in prayer even when we don't feel the rhythm.Then I hear God speak.

"I love you. You are all my children."

I fumble in my bag for my notebook and pen, rushing to capture His words.The girl next to me casts me a sidelong glance, intrigued or offended by my non-Jewishness, I cannot tell. I finally dig out my notebook and pen. I start to write His words, what I felt/knew I heard. As I take the cap off my pen, turquoise ink spills everywhere. Dying my page, my hands. The girl looks over again. I blush, feeling more irreverent than ever. It's not even a dignified black ink or even a Jesus-red, but bright blue. My hands are stained, like I've come to finger paint at the Wailing Wall. At this spot closest to the Holy of Holies.The girl is staring now. I give an embarrassed shrug and angle my chair away from her. I bow my head and pray into my turquoise hands. I barely get out a, "God...help." when I feel a tap on my shoulder.  The Jewish girl is asking for my attention. Our eyes lock. She hands me a tissue. I gladly receive the tissue along with her understanding smile. She turns back to her rhythmic prayers. I blot off the ink. Grab a new pen and write the words,

"I love you. You are all my children."