Still thinking about it...

There is a moment of praying for someone that has haunted me for nearly two years. I wrote it about shortly after it happened here. That post remains my favorite blog post of all time, and you should read it before you read this one.

I've lost touch with her since then... and I wish I hadn't... I miss her - I miss her gutsy attitude in the face of insurmountable odds. I miss her sarcasm, her understanding of femininity, sharing books with her, and making catty comments back and forth across the Christian bookstore aisle at some of the truly ridiculous titles.

I'd like to pray for her again now, to wrap my arms around her and pray from this side of God's healing... to pray with the real belief in a God who heals and loves, and wants so desperately for her to find freedom and healing and wholeness.

I'd love to see her dance in worship, and see the triumph on her face when she tells a really great God story.

I wrote that night that I was praying that God would take a tiny mustard seed of faith - that He would hear the cry of my heart and not the inadequate words of my mouth. I remember the complete frustration of that moment, the whispered prayers, the shouting at a God who I was convinced didn't hear, because my own life was in such shambles.

Two weeks later I was healed. Seven years of depression gone - nearly overnight.

And her story? tied to my own healing - a long story involving feet, cutting, visions, and so much more.

Two years have passed, and I still find myself asking Jesus what it means that my own healing was so closely tied to the brokenness of another young woman. I was asking it again over the weekend...

I hadn't realized until today how close together the two dates were - the date of that moment when I held her in church, and the date of my own healing. The distance between hopelessness and growing wholeness was shorter than I remembered.


And now, I can't gather her in my arms anymore. No more catty comments in bookstores, or watching her dance during worship, but I still think about her often.

And though I can't hold her, the prayers for her wholeness roll nearly daily from my lips.

A Place of Vulnerability and Trust

More great stuff from Henri Nouwen...

A Place of Vulnerability and Trust

When we gather around the table and eat from the same loaf and drink from the same cup, we are most vulnerable to one another. We cannot have a meal together in peace with guns hanging over our shoulders and pistols attached to our belts. When we break bread together we leave our arms - whether they are physical or mental - at the door and enter into a place of mutual vulnerability and trust.

The beauty of the Eucharist is precisely that it is the place where a vulnerable God invites vulnerable people to come together in a peaceful meal. When we break bread and give it to each other, fear vanishes and God becomes very close.