A couple of weeks ago in July, I was a counselor at a bereavement camp for kids up in the mountains of Colorado. Even though it was my second year, it still totally took my breath away to drive up to the scenic view, complete with rustic wooden cabins nestled in the midst. The beauty, for me, however, isn’t just in the picturesque scene, but also in the super hard work and deep relationships that take place at Camp Comfort, intended for emotional support.
Literally in the middle of the 1st night, there was a minor emergency that I needed to immediately resolve without disturbing the peace. The hardest part, actually, was that I needed to quietly navigate through a cabin in the dark, without waking up 25 really-insanely-hard-to-get-to-sleep 3-6 year old girls and their exhausted counselors. My flashlight was also playing a winning game of hide and seek, so I was acutely aware of each and every sound my body made as I navigated through the dark maze.
As I was coming down the old, creaky, wooden stairs, back to our room, it made me think how my intense need to keep as quiet as possible was not much unlike an emotional healing process. Sometimes in pitch black, potentially full of splinters, not so comfortable, and, well, audible when least expected. However, still ultimately headed somewhere brighter.
Here are some sounds of progress that I have heard over the last two weeks:
“I was… wrong & I am very sorry.”
“It hurts, and I need help”
“I really miss my mommy”
“I thought I was all alone”
Words of repentance, words admitting a need for interdependence, and words that show the true beauty of raw honesty are all part of a collective chorus towards freedom. In my experience, healing & recovery is rarely quiet, or without squeaks & creaks along the way. However, I am trying to remember, that for myself as well as for my friends, that there is so much power in the journey, not just the ethereal destination. My hope is that we listen well to and for the sounds of healing in each other; in ourselves.
What do you hear when you think of the “sound of progress” in your life?
So….I’m sitting here on an average day–no shocking headlines or famous dead guys to quote today. I do, however, have a few ponderings rolling around in my head….I’ve prepared for you a special something straight from my heart of Tami-ness (smirk). And just to make it more special (ahem), I write to you from a psychiatric ward in CO, as a patient. Yes, from a hospital. Yes, I’m broken.
Pentecost celebrates the birth of the church by the Holy Spirit, which came (just as Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would be with us) to all of his followers in a common experience.
So…um , I hear things.
Saturday night at The Refuge we are focusing on the season of Easter and signs of life and hope. This past weekend we discussed Jesus’ interaction with a crippled man at the pool. “Do you want to get well?” is how Jesus opens the conversation. One might think that must be rhetorical, just a polite starter. But of course, I doubt that. Perhaps Jesus really wants to challenge the man’s thinking and inertia with this question.
for the past few saturdays we have been focusing on the word “gratitude”. for some, i have heard that it stirs up bad feelings–“here we go with the guilt–yeah, no doubt i’m probably not thankful enough.” for others, it is a reminder of how easy it is to forget how much we have to be grateful for–that life, circumstances, and all kinds of other things can block us from noticing what is good, what we do have to be thankful for despite what’s hard.
this past saturday at the refuge we talked about how faith and doubt can exist in the same situation. it’s a little like the optical illusion images that most of us have seen, the one where you either see a vase or the profile of two people looking at each other. it just depends how we look at the picture/situation. we tend to vacillate back and forth, but we never seem to be able to focus on one or the other for a long period of time.
