Sabbatical Vol 2

It's Monday. It's been a good weekend - some long parts to it, but ending each day in rest does something to your soul. For me it makes the colors and textures of life come alive. I have never, not to my memory, felt more physically exhausted - emotionally raw and yet so alive spiritually in all of my life. Sabbatical is a beautiful thing.

Yesterday we attended an African American church in a neighborhood where our friends, Randy and Anda Brown, live and raise their kids. Our pastor was the guest speaker at Pleasant Mt. Gilead. He talked about family and how we were born out of the triune love of family, God - Jesus - Holy Spirit. Beautiful.

I sat there with the Lawman and we cried. I cried for a lot of reasons. To begin, African American worship is my heart worship - the kind that wakes things up in me that were planted there as a child. We all have that music that pulls at our heart in a way unlike any other. Many of my childhood Sundays were spent sitting in black churches across the Bible Belt trying to learn harmony and how all the different parts of sound go together. There is a flow of worship that is reached in this culture that I haven't experienced any place else. In my imagination these sounds and tones ~ this worship is sacred because of the places they are born in the people who are singing them. No one sings of freedom or redemption like someone who has been owned or enslaved.

I cried because it's right when we're all together. Every skin tone and every culture and every experience - all together and worshiping the Most High who made and loves us all. Seeing my children in that place was powerful. My big kids spend a lot of time in Como where we spent Sunday morning, but seeing my little kids walk into nursery excited and ready to enter into everything going on made me smile - something right happens when kids see color as a beautiful differentiation, but not an obstacle.

One of the Lawman's biggest heroes is MLK. I think it's his heart for justice and it's how he was raised too - to look past disabilities/color/culture and see the person. But the source of his tears were more about reconciliation and how long we've come and how we have so much farther to go. Because when your people have been the source of oppression for another people you either own it or you don't. Not owning it sound like racial jokes, slurs and saying things like "They have the same opportunities as we do!"

But equality looks different when you're handed the equipment and shown the field to the same game, but realize you have never been taught how to play the game or shown the rules and your gear is the other teams old/broken/used gear and your field hasn't been watered or cared for...so yeah that was where we started with "equality"...and we have come a long way, but we aren't there yet. And I'm happy that my kids, who have come from a privileged past as a race, can share scholarships with kids who's great-great grandparents were slaves...to my people. It takes many generations to heal those kinds of wounds. Many.

Back to sabbatical things. ;) One of the things I'm learning on sabbatical is that soul rest is the place where we hear, see and feel things the deepest. Years had gone by with my heart full of pride and shame (did you know they're friends?:) in my heart. They held hands and kept me longing for more "capacity" and for others to stop burning out and just keep going. I'd get aggravated and upset that they're "weakness" just added to my load. I really appreciated strong people over weaker ones any day.

Jesus loves me - this I know...because He left me hit a wall. Hard. Lying there looking at that wall I didn't know how to get over - all I knew was that I couldn't keep going. I didn't know who I was and I certainly didn't know how to find out. I just knew that I was going to have to find myself and others would have to adjust and maybe even be sad.

Beginning sabbatical has felt like running a 20+ year long marathon of lay ministry and finally stopping. (not to mention the 18 years of ministry before I got married ;) I'm physically tired, I'm discovering injuries I didn't know were there, I'm wondering if I even like "running' and if I do what kind of races was I intended to run in this next season? But more than all of that I am seeing life - beautiful, vivid, aromatic LIFE and it is wonderful! Giving myself permission to sit and watch the sunlight come through these hundred year old windows, to hold my baby longer or to grab a cup of coffee...rather than answering that "urgent call", reaching out to the new life group member or planning another event...I'm choosing to have compassion on my human need to see and feel the colors of life. My life. Because my kids will be grown and gone, I'll be older and not able to see the sun this way or taste coffee the same; but the people with needs...they'll always be there. Always.

I am learning that I cannot give what I do not have myself. If I am tired and empty the people under my care are too. If I cannot have compassion for myself I cannot have compassion on others. If I cannot give myself grace I cannot give others grace.  All of these things are so basic and "duh" moments for a lot of people, but when you're running so hard you cannot see anything except the next step you miss most of life. Ummmmm....I stopped and LIFE IS JUST STUNNING!!!

The awareness that He doesn't need me, but is inviting me to join Him in anything He's doing...JUST BECAUSE HE LOVES ME....FREEDOM!!!!!