We conquer by continuing

  Clearly, I would have written the story differently.  But just maybe, just maybe the story was not mine to write, maybe not mine to change because who knows what a different ending would have held.  You see in my stories there are no people who can not walk.  There are no blind people and no one waits 17 years for healing.   And in my stories, healing is always quite dramatic and apparent.  And in my story, everyone knows they conquered.  Everyone.

 There is a reason that I am not writing the story and that grace is.  This is not a story told often.  Often enough.  It is uncomfortable for everyone.  People just will not speak of their shame of needing healing.  They just will not. So,tonight at the least convenient and thoughtful of times between the noise and chaos, the gospel reading reminded me again just how very responsible we are for our own healing and how very often it does not look like we want it . After all, it is between the noise that stories usually get told.  We just have to listen. It pops up out of nowhere, inconvenient but beautiful.  In the grocery store check out line.  Meeting someone new at work.  In between dropping kids off at school.  Over dinner tables.  Listening to someone describe their story and knowing they don't know yet how deep the wound lies.  Wishing after hearing the story that collective wisdom could be shared and they would be spared pain.  Talking with others who carry similar wounds or overhearing that others too have been where I have traveled.  I carry it in my heart always, an inventory of grief and pain and loss and I remember for it is in the remembering that the story is honored and all stories are sacred works of art.

I have discovered how uncomfortable loss and suffering and evil really is for those who are not walking the journey.  I discovered it first from watching people who were suppose to be listening and helping but their own personal agendas got in the way.   The silences were deafening.   I am not sure if those listening were too insecure, too immature, too ego centered, too mentally ill, too broken or if the pain was that overwhelming.  Perhaps that is why.  Perhaps not. The best kind of story is always saturated from start to finish with grace.  While the end of the story has yet to be written, I know that eventually if we allow grace to work, healing happens.  The hardest part of birthing a story is reconciling the fraility of others and the evil of others.   And then there is my own frailty and humanness that surfaces and is ugly and raw and to look at, to be with or even listen to, because deep down we are all as equally capable of good as evil.  The choice is ours.  Not something we like to admit our capacity to harm others particularly when we are playing the role of victim.  We all are after all, the types of character who desperately need redeeming and saving again and again. 

But, when things fall apart and they almost always do when I am trying to control them, grace steps in and blows away all of my misconceptions and misgivings.  It rushes in unexpectedly and breathes light into the black darkness, beauty into the ugliness and life into death.  Grace is the real hero… grace is the one who heals the deep soul wounds and writes a whole new beginning.  The new beginning does not necessarily wipe the old, but grace uses it, redeems it and weaves it into a tapestry that while tattered and frayed around the edges and even in the broken, torn places where the holes of suffering and pain still exist, there is exquisite beauty. 

Grace is a skillful weaver and takes the worst kind of characters, the most flawed of characters, the worst kind of ending and creates a work of art. 

 

The threads I would rather hide and cut out and tuck out of site become the stuff of great workmanship that grace can use.  It would not behoove me to disapprove of grace’s choice of materials or grace’s timetable.  After all, I only see from my side.  After all, I only see all the knots, unharmonious mix of colors and unsightly choice of material.  My dislike of the story is only natural because I clearly wanted another ending.  But, grace takes my hand and guides or in some cases plummets me into an abyss of pain and abandonment and then the right ending is revealed.  And I am left, as always, amazed and breathless by this act of amazing grace.  After all the author of the story is grace, amazing grace.

It is in continuing to write the story, continuing to move forward that creates the beauty.  Only a few ever do this and perhaps that is why so few miracles are recorded.  And perhaps that is why Jesus asked which is easier?  Getting up and walking or forgiving sin?  It infuriated them because as someone once said to me, "Pyschologically, you don't know how to leave the space."  I admire people who are willing to cut holes in roofs to heal, who will wait for 17 years and who believe it is just the one small touch of Jesus that will heal them.  They don't have to see him face to face or even speak to him at all, they just have to touch him for a brief moment.  I admire people who despite incredible odds like roofs that are in the way of healing and yet they persist.  And perhaps the people I admire most are the ones who only by grace do not wound others with their own wounds.  They perfer to hold on to them until healing happens, however that they may be.  And I think that is the story of the miracles, don't inflict your pain on others.  We do that in a variety of ways and quite honestly, I believe we are aware of it, we just choose to ignore it. And the paralytic did that today, he only asked his friends to help, he did not ask them to own it nor did he expect them to stop walking just because he could not.  He conquered by continuing to believe that one day the roof would open.