Faith Matters

Sometimes, I sit, and let the sound of whatever music I’m listening to wash over me. In those unguarded moments, my heart fills to its brim and my soul let’s out a gasp, as though it’d been holding it’s breath, stuck drowning, beneath the endless hurry and noise of my life.

It’s a short moment, a quiet one, and often, terrifying.

As the music rolls on, I feel an opening in my heart, and a spilling out of all that I’ve held back. If unguarded long enough, tears roll down, and I’m filled with a completely inexplicable sadness. It is usually there that I hastily stitch my soul back together, and cram as much emotion back inside, afraid the tsunami of all that I carry will wash me away.

I cannot be alone in this. I know I’m not alone in this, for I’ve found a place where I can safely unpack, piece by piece, and where I am slowly allowing myself to pour out in these quiet moments. A small room, that smells of disinfectant and glue, where the chairs aren’t very comfortable, and where temporary dividers hide children’s toys that must remain in the room for the programing during the week. We file in, quietly at first, until the laughter and conversation reaches it’s crescendo. We share, and we each pick a stitch open on our hearts, and allow a trickle of sorrow, of joy, of fear, of anger… to bleed out into our sacred space.

At times it’s messy… one stitch gives way to three, and a flood of heartache washes over us all. The difference is we aren’t alone. I’m not as frightened by the wave of fear and sorrow when they hold my hand.

Perspective is everything, and on this sea of life, I quickly realize that my storms aren’t nearly as frightening as others, and that perhaps, I can paddle out from under my rain cloud long enough to help piece a friend’s vessel back together. This journey together over the waves of life gives me hope, and when we each paddle our way back to our own shores, I catch myself mourning.

My soul aches for this, not just once or twice a week, but daily. I need to moor my vessel with others if I am to get through this in one piece. Yet my vision is so cloudy that I cannot begin to imagine how that looks. Does it look like living together? Does it look like table fellowship? Does it look like what we already have?

And I feel the need for collective imagination, of dreaming together of what we need, what we want, and how we can best live out this journey together. So until then, I’ll stitch my heart back up, and wait until Sunday… when I feel safest to journey into the depths of myself, and have a hand to hold.

And pray that we can begin to imagine……together.