When You Love Your Body

She calls with her heart so full of pain that I can almost see it dragging out the bottom of her soul.  She cries and blames herself, and I rush in just so I can get my hands under her.  Aaron lifting Moses.  We've got emergency heart surgery on our hands 'cause satan's trying to take her out, and I won't stand it.

If God doesn't speak to her?  Well then aren't we all toast?

Pain is blinding.

I get to be the eyes in the Body of Christ.  Easy for me when her beauty hits my heart so hard that sometimes I've got to close them.  Too much Jesus in her face and that's not always easy now is it?  Just the way her love is hard to take, and the way it always makes me cry.  To be known.  To be accepted despite the phone junk and the fear and the humor hiding that lump of hurt swept under.

I reach for her hands.  Hold tight.  'Cause she said to me once, "I'm not just going to stand here and let you die." She threw me a life line.  Basically hauled me in.

This is the beauty of the Body.  Oh, God.  You are brilliant in Your design.

How we take these giant leaps out into the wide open knowing that we are going to fall and be impaled on the lives of others.  Because that is what our experience has taught us...really, really well.  But in the arms of the Body, the everlasting arms of the Body of Christ, we fall safe into compassion and grace.  We are held, and friends, it makes no sense to the broken heart that falls expecting to be hurt, humiliated, ignored, left, lied to, devalued, dehumanized, and...

ALONE.

When it turns out that we are caught and suspended and nurtured and held and...

HEALED?

The heart quickens and there is this great hope that begins to close the gaping hole left by the world.  The world of men.

So whether you are an eye or a thigh, a chin or a shin, be the best you can be for Christ's sake.

You never know when you might shine the light for a fellow traveller walking the dark night of the soul.

You just never do know.

Bernadette