Fasting and Feasting
I was unsure of what to make of the absence of book therapy. Growing up, we had a thirty foot hardwood hallway leading from one end of our house to the other. I would lace up my roller skates and bury my head in books. For hours.
I wanted to see an opening inside the book fast. I began the month in need of daily bread and acknowledging our lives had fallen out of order. Maybe I had been overfed but malnourished. Maybe it was time to open my heart and mind and body to new ways of seeing and being and ordering my life. Maybe I needed a few new tools for diving further into my inner life, maybe the new stresses, like the stress on the vines, was causing my roots to dig in even further.
There could be greater purpose in Silence, if I could have eyes to see. Loneliness began to transform in front of me. I decided instead to call her Solitude. What am I hungry for? What am I fasting from? What will I feast upon? Jesus still asking: what do you want me to do for you?
“Uncovering the secrets that silence has to teach us is not easy.
Silence, until properly befriended, is scary and the process of befriending it is the soul’s equivalent of crossing a hot desert.
Our insides don’t easily become calm, restlessness doesn’t easily turn into solitude, and the temptation to turn to the outside world for consolation doesn’t easily give way to the idea of quiet.
But there’s a peace and a meaning that can only be found inside the desert of our own chaotic and raging insides. The deep wells of consolation lie at the end of an inner journey through heat, thirst, and dead-ends that must be pushed through with dogged fidelity.
And, as for any epic journey, the task is not for the faint of heart.”
I wanted to make sense of my church hurt, of the rejection and shame I had felt from white Christian women, and my continued longing for intimacy with Jesus. I wanted to write myself a pink permission slip that said, “I’m done. I’m finished.” But in the middle of this remembering season with God, I realize my heart can still be filled with unanswerable questions. I can still feel the ache and divide with the church. I don’t have to get in line, follow the rules or live in their tribes to stay close to God. They can draw their boundary lines with insiders and outsiders, members and nonmembers, they can keep writing their long letters clarifying that people can attend but not belong. God is the one telling the stories of leaving behind entire flocks to find one sheep.
I remember in the darkest hour of my early adulthood, having a vision of myself lying on the bottom of a dry well. My life was filled with deception. I had alienated my family and broken off my first engagement with Josh. The well was damp but warm. I was not cold but I was dirty, my clothes worn and my hair matted. I was laying down in the fetal position with my hands beneath my face like a child. And when I opened my eyes, God was laying right there mirroring my body language and watching me. I know now, like a parent watches their child sleep. I cried at the thought of myself, so broken and unclean. And at the thought of God following me into this horrible place; following me into the shallow, empty darkness I had chosen.
He put his hand on my face and said, “Its ok. I’m right here. I’m going to be right here. There is no place you can go - even in your most willful and darkest hours - that I will not go to be with you.”
I was a total mess. But I was a healing mess. And I was being honest about who I was. When your life is out in the light, you don’t have to fear the darkness. Honesty is the antidote. Forgiveness is the salve. Togetherness is the redemption.
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