Lent 2024: Week three.

Wounds

I can still feel the pain even though it’s been years since I sat in my childhood dentist’s chair. “It’s just air,” he said as he pushed the button and blew a burst of air in my face. It made me laugh. When he blew the air in my mouth and hit my newest cavity I was no longer laughing. I arched my back and gripped the arms of the seat so tight I thought they might break.

So it is when you touch a cavity or any kind of wound. They go unnoticed until they’re touched, or a gust of life’s wind blows in their direction. The pain makes us feel them again for the first time.

We all have wounds. Some might be small and shallow, others large and deep. Some might have healed; others could well be scabbed and ready to open at a moment. Maybe it’s a wound about money, a relationship, a health issue, or career event. Wounds come in all shapes and sizes, and they are specific and unique to us. (Example: a friend does not have the same wounds about money that his spouse does, so when they meet to do taxes, wounds get touched and she recoils.)

I suppose wounds are part of being human, and Lent is a time to acknowledge our wounds. Like our griefs (week 1), and our brokenness (week 2), ignoring our wounds does not get them to disappear. Only by looking, letting them be seen as the hurts they are, will they ever heal.

Such truth is easier to write than practice. No one wants to feel pain, let alone feel it again, but someone wiser than I once taught me that there’s new life on the other side of the pain. When clinging to the arms of a chair and arching my back, the hope of that new life is the only thing that sees me through. Yes, I admit, I’ve often reached for “Novocain” of every sort, but that only delayed the pain and sometimes created new wounds of their own.

This Lent, I want to do the work so that, come Easter, there are more empty tombs than the one two thousand years ago. That would be something to celebrate, indeed.

Lent 2024: Week two

Hiding the Bokenness

When I was a child, I broke my parents’ vase. I don’t remember how, but I remember what I did with the broken shards. I hid them. No one was around to hear the vase fall, no one saw the debris, so I quickly scooped up the pieces and placed them on the shelf in the playroom closet behind a stuffed animal, baseball mitt, or board games like Twister, Sorry, or Mousetrap. I’m not sure what I was thinking. It wasn’t like my parents wouldn’t notice the missing vase, but, at the time, hiding the pieces seemed like a good idea.

It still does.

Although I’m older now, my first instinct when I see the broken parts of me is to hide them. For years, I did my best to hide my brokenness. I stuffed the pieces behind a Christmas-card-family, a successful career, even a black shirt and plastic white collar. I also made sure I surrounded myself with friends who wouldn’t look too close. The problem was, my hiding did nothing to the brokenness. The pieces were still there whether I saw them or not. They were just as real even if no one noticed.

If my emerging faith has given me anything, it’s the power to stop hiding my brokenness. In the assurance that I’m created in God’s image but have distorted that image through costly mistakes and crippling fears, there’s no need to keep hiding parts of me.

Lent is a time to do soul-searching, and one of the things we should search for deep within our souls is the brokenness we’ve spent a lifetime hiding. Like naming grief last week, this is not easy work. It will take effort and practice, but the freedom on the other side is worth it.

Who knows, maybe our courage will invite others to do the same.

Lent 2024: week one

(This is a follow-up to the first Lenten brushstroke. Each week will be another suggestion based on the opening image.)

For what do you grieve?

The question, no doubt, conjures up a list of names unique to each of us, but laced with a similar pain. Regardless of time, we carry that list with us every day and, like the opening Lenten image of the clogged stream, our grief often hinders God’s flow within us. This is a season to look at those names, see the faces, hear the voices, and remember specific moments.  Taking time to do this is to lift branches and clear away leaves from our internal stream.

But there are also other reasons for grief which are equally lasting and harmful. The loss of one’s good health, vibrant marriage, parent’s love/attention, or secure job are some of the other reasons we grieve. So, too, is an empty house with grown-up children gone. A lost friendship or sterling reputation can also cause us to grieve. The reasons are endless, and the grief is real. Few take the time to do the work of resolving it.

·      For me, just naming every reason I have to grieve is a start. (Making an uncensored list is helpful).

·      Taking time to feel the hurt and stop ignoring it is the next step. (I know we are taught to avoid pain, but this can be fruitful soul work if you have the courage.)

·      Exploring what happened (and my role in it, if I have one) is an additional step that will bring a sense of closure so few of us experience.

·      Once I have done all of this, I place whatever it is on the altar within me, the one where I place things too hard to handle and ask God for help.

Think of this as the hard, messy work of clearing the stream. It’s not the only work we need to do, but it’s a significant start.