Laid Bare

What is it like to be naked and exposed, to have your joints divided from your marrow?

*see bottom of post for moving update*

I received lab results on my birthday last week.
They taste like a new invitation in my mouth.
One i feel ready for after years of one step forward, two back.
I’ll share more after move.

Today I sense I’m (finally) in the marrow of my story.
At least in a cavity of it. Maybe. Jeez. I’m smiling.

Old me believed the Bible functioned like a sword.
It’s what I was taught.
Old me imagined myself a warrior with it strapped to my side.
I was a nice girl so I didn’t wield it visibly.
The wielding of my sword happened invisibly. Mostly.
Under my skin.

Silent judgements.
Policing everyone and everything. Myself more so.
Who was saved who wasn’t saved. Yada Yada.
Wait! I typed to fast.
I did wield it.
On my family.

They didn’t understand the church, or us.
Not really.
So, we cut them off.
I wouldn’t say it was boundaries.
Back then that wasn’t talked about, or known.
At least in my world.

Today me is discovering more about boundaries and us/them thinking.
It’s not clear yet. Kinda foggy. But I’m observing something happening in our culture where you just cut people off. Like with a sword. Totally get safety, abuse etc. Then there is healing our traumas. So much hurt harm and hate.
What does real forgiveness, mercy, repairing the world look like? Feel like?
Staying curious with all of it. I feel so many church words need rewritten with pictures of real life humans becoming more human happening. Maybe that’s some of what we’re in the middle of these days.

But I’m holding onto what I’m sensing and feeling until a later date.
I’m committed, compelled and overwhelmed with curiosity to keep walking toward the unknown lands like a pioneer with the living Other than God who won’t leave me alone. I smiled as I typed that.

***
Context: 25 years ago in a small, all white southern baptist church.

Imagine my mama’s delight hearing we won!

We won the fight with the deacon board to bring Awana’s to Broadway Baptist.
I was first in line to send my kids.
Soldiers in the Lord’s army.
That was the language Broadway Baptist used.
The language I used.
Grace was in cubbies. Dakota in sparkies
The girls in youth.

I remember hearing their classes do sword drills.
Pride expanded me like a balloon.
Look at my kids. Girding their brain with verses.

I remember the importance of memorizing verses.
It’s good to memorize verses. There isn’t anything bad in and of itself memorizing.

I memorized Psalm 23 in Ms. Zoski’s fourth grade class.
I still can recite it.
I still receive strength from Psalm 23 today.

The kids were rewarded for memorizing Bible verses.
I wanted them to get rewards so I drove them crazy with questions all week.

“Did you study your verses” which always met with eye rolls.

***

Somehow, I never imagined the living God coming for me with a sword.
The sword of the Lord was more for others. Not me.
It’s what the Bible says isn’t it?

We heard Hebrews 4:12-12 often.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. ¹³ Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Until the sword entered me.
And I entered the Words.

Maybe this is the moment it all began.
The beginning of my ending.

****

whatever was happening to me and in me didn’t feel any longer like something I could pull out and use on someone.

it was being used on and in my and my story.
And nobody was going to believe me.
In fact, most people would leave me.
Truthfully, I left me.

The openness and bareness of it all.
The experience of nothing hidden.
Is this the real way God?

What is it like to be naked and exposed, to have your joints divided from your marrow?

The Bible was my sword after all.
I felt the rug pulled from beneath me.
Everything last thing I built my life on began shaking.
I had no footing. No feet.

I felt some safety and comfort believing it protected me from demons, “them” and my own deceived heart. It’s what I was taught.

I was invisibly armed and protected.
Wasn’t I? My kids? My family?

Today me experientially knows the Bible doesn’t sort everything out and set everything straight. Gosh I wish it did somedays.

It’s been 25 years since the living God of Isaiah 6 came for me in Broadway Baptist second row pew through a black pastor from St. Kitts, Jedidiah Blake.

Who to this day I swear he was an answer with skin to my silent cry for help.

Help that would be 25 years later to even begin to feel it as help.
It didn’t feel good or helpful.

The last 25 years felt like being suspended.
Left hanging.
Disoriented.
Wrenched.
Pain without an end.
Like something or someone was killing me.

Today I sense and feel I was being begged and drawn into another world where lines break down and separations cease and you lose your sense of righteousness, of being a victim to everyone else’s wrong, and your heart is broken open, your joints separated from your marrow.

In the words of Karl Barth “The word of God isn’t a series of flat stories with clear points; it’s a wild unmanageable, “moving, living organ.”

I wish we were taught, not so much with words but with real life stories what reborn looks, feels smells and taste like.
Maybe that’s what Bible stories really are.
I imagine it looks as one of a kind as each of us.

I no longer believe it’s in a decision.
Or a walk down an aisle.
Or getting baptized.
Even though all of these can be true.

How do we die (and not really die)

I feel bold, cautious and ambivalent yet steady, enough.
I’m full of some sort of energy I can’t put my finger on so and with 25 years of experience of being I’m not going to try, tired of saying things so I’ve decided to do things

There is no striving for hard certainty.
I’m being swept up in what feels like life in walking toward the unknown.
Uncertainty my trustworthy companion.
It’s polar opposite to what I’ve been taught, or expected.
it doesn’t feel solid or safe.

There are no guarantee’s.
In all honesty, what’s finding me feels undomesticated.
I can no longer count on a solid outcome.
Somehow, I feel hopeful land full of transforming possibility.

It’s where I’ve discovered/ing a Love that surplus requires no words.
It’s meant to be food and drink, feasted upon.
Entered into…
Become a part of our new skin stories.
It’s the healing. The medicine.
The repair.

I smile.
Of course there are no words for this.
We can’t think our way. No brain.
We experience our way. Feel. Embody.

We’re meant to live, really life.
And to experience life in the marrow
we are begged, invited, required really, to be pierced with the sword.

Let the sword enter us.
The words enter us.
Say yes to surgery.
Say yes to being cut open from top to bottom.
Yes to being open and laid bare.

And we enter the words like being, or worlds we’ve never before seen.

Maybe we’re not crazy after all.
Maybe we are right now emerging.
Old ways of doing things ending.
The building new worlds (within and without) beginning.

yet somehow, I lived.
and I’m more alive than I’ve ever been.

praying shalom upon each of you,
x, T (harriet)

***

We begin moving next Thursday.
I can’t believe it’s almost here!
And I’ll be glad when it’s over.
My insides feel like the last chapter in my book, Misfit Table.
I’m exhausted.
This move is a lot. Not going to sugar coat it.
My body feels it will break.
But I’m taking care of me.
Moving is one of the most stressful events.
And I feel electric and buzzy with beginnings.

I feel your prayers, too.
I find strength in your texts.
Grateful I get to do life with you people.
We’re re-homing June which is gutting.
Even though it feels right I’m so sad it hurts.
I’m feeling and grieving.

We found good parents for her though. And she will have a sister.
She’s been on a sleepover with them.
And they are friends of ours. We will be able to see her now and again.