I wanted to share with you something I wrote a while ago. I wrote this at a time in my life when I was angry and very sad. I remember being at church during this time and thinking how can these people want to be here. It was very annoying to me, to be honest, because I didn’t want to be there. I showed up and I did the right things and spoke good Christian-ese so no one would ask too many questions. But I was really counting the minutes until I could bolt out the door only to cry in my car the whole way home. I want to share this more vulnerable writing with you because I want you to know that its okay to not have the answers. It’s okay to feel broken, but we can’t stay broken. This is not a valley we set-up camp in. Allowing God, the Potter, to mend us is vital. Healing is a process and this expression was a part of that process for me. Remember, the Potter is always engaged with His creation. It’s ok to acknowledge the cracks and the flaws while allowing Him to restore us.
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Why are you happy to be here? I can tell it’s not an act or to save face. I can see you truly want to be here. And if I am honest with you, I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be at home, or at work. I don’t want to be anything to anyone, anymore. Why are you happy to be here? And don’t tell me its the joy of the Lord, I know that answer. I know that happiness is circumstantial and joy is a decision. Give me happiness! Because happiness means there are good things happening. But joy means even if the world falls around me, it is still my choice to be joyful. That sounds too hard. It sounds a lot like its my responsibility and I have enough of those already. Happiness is holding a bucket and just catching good things like it’s rain. And joy might sound like a gift from God that we just need to accept, but that’s not how it works. Joy is a gift we have to keep unwrapping. It’s a box within a box, within a box. At times it can be a bucket in the desert with only one rain cloud a 1,000 miles away. Joy is a knowing, not a feeling. It’s knowing there is a rain cloud in the desert, even if you can’t feel the rain right now. Happiness is standing directly under the rain cloud. Give me happiness…….until it runs out. Because feelings come and go like seasons. And when the rain dries up, and it will dry up, you have to feel the heat, you have to feel the hot sand under your feet. If you are going to depend on happiness and feelings, you have to feel the entire desert. I once heard a friend say she hadn’t cried in 7 years and I thought, “wow, that’d be great”. Because hurt is also a feeling. Anger is a feeling, shame is a feeling, just like happy is a feeling. I feel these things, I feel the whole world around me and it’d be nice if I didn’t. How do you turn feeling too much into not feeling at all? How do you accept that there is a rain cloud even if you can’t see it, yet? How do you rely on the knowing and not the feeling? Why are you always so happy to be here? Asking for a friend….
Restorative Mercy 