And This Is My Hope

And this is my hope:
that the mom who struggles to juggle all of her hats...
that the single young woman who struggles with pornography and sex...
that the grandparent who struggles with how his grandchildren are raised...
that the single young female who has just been raped...
that the child who struggles to multiply and read...
that the teenager who struggles with identity...
that the pastor who struggles to understand life...
that the husband who is beaten by his demanding wife...
that the couple who struggles to have their own child...
that the kid whose drug-addiction is driving him wild...
Would be able to come to the Church--
The community of God,
The Body of Christ--
And speak the truth of their lives
Without
Fear (or)
Reality of
Judgment,
Condemnation, (or)
Passive dismissal that everything will be okay.

Oh God of Love,
whom I fully desire but daily struggle to understand,
Fill us with this hope (and)
let it rush over lives (and)
consume time and space
like the trembling sea waters that have covered Japan.

Fill us with this hope (and)
turn it into listening action that
is life-giving, life-affirming, life-altering (and)
full of redemption, courage, and patient grace.

May we live as one as You are one (and)
May we daily take steps toward Truth.

Amen.

3.21.11

-----------

An excerpt from my second session of counseling, 3.2.07

Maybe part of the breakthrough is going to be releasing the pain that has become a numbness toward having to live separate lives. Living separate lives is very difficult, having to hide and put on a face for most of my life that doesn’t portray what I really feel on the inside, really who I am—it’s very, very painful and it’s very difficult—yet I’ve become kind of numb and resigned to the fact that that’s just how it is and maybe part of what I need to do is feel that pain again and then work through it.

Grief is the ongoing pain—umm—the whole process of letting go of something and moving on and—umm—mourning is an outward, public expression of that grief and mourning, and being able to outwardly express something is part of the process of grief and if you can’t publicly mourn something then grief tends to linger longer.

Are there steps that I can take to be closer to being truthful—like, umm, not necessarily disclosing full details about how I’m doing but just actually saying to somebody, “I’m in a bad place,” or that “I’ve had a really bad night; I’m feeling really kind of sad, I don’t want to talk about, but just know that, that things are really hard right now.” Are there steps that I can take, moving closer to being truthful so that I don’t have hide everything?