2013
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. John 13:34
Every now and then I bump into a friend, not often, maybe once or twice a year, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less. We don’t talk about the weather. We maybe get an opportunity to speak for five or ten minutes if that, sometimes as little as two.
Those precious minutes are profound, profound in the simplicity of friendship. We take up where we left off. My friend is hurting, there is secret hurt and open wounds of hurt. There is a link.
When we have a secret hurt that no one knows about people can unintentionally push our buttons. An eruption can take place where everyone around is flattened by the ferocity, but no one really knows why. People forensically examine the conversation or the email or the whatever to see the causative action. None is found because the volcano that is let out is nothing compared to the deeply rooted hurt that is festering in our heart.
Living in jubilee is different. I have been told that I am going to be so hurt in this faith journey. I feel that there will be people who may try to hurt, but I have survived and been healed from the most secret hurt that it no longer exists. Stuff in situations exists, there is nothing I can do to control the stuff that flies my way or the people who throw the stuff. BUT living in this moment of jubilee means that by the time the stuff hits the outskirts of my town (me) I am already working through my long list of coping skills, which one is needed to dig into the stuff, take what is needed to be dealt with and throw away the unnecessary clutter of other people’s stuff.
I love my friend, and I know we will be meeting very soon. I see her pain, the secret hurt burning deep within has been shared and as she deals with the wild fires, I pray for her, that she might too feel the touch of healing when the time is right. We clutch together in a hug that transcends our generations.
I do not have the power to heal her, I hope and pray that as she sees the transformative power of healing in me, she too will accept the hand in the fire. Too often we sit in our unhealed state because we cannot envisage life with healing within us, without us. Sometimes I pray for a conversation about the weather, because “stuff” is hard, it can be draining and then I remember it’s not supposed to easy, this journey.
Relationships are difficult, family is difficult, life is difficult but with the love and strength of the Lord indwelling free from the debt of life spiritually and physically, when each breath is a moment of joy, bring on the difficult … this is the way to live.
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