PART 1 -- Pain

I am 10 years into my journey of daily physical pain. I've learned in those years that pain dulls other experiences. It steals clarity, drains energy and takes up attention. It depresses and suppresses the good things. It highlights the bad; it embitters. 

I dislike having this weakness. Actually, I hate it. Its enduring presence has taught me to be less hopeful. It has, at times, made me angry. It has taught me to ball up my hands into fists, and fear when I could trust. 

I have often felt as if I am acting from only a fraction of myself, while some other parts are taken up in the grind of navigating pain. 

PART 2 -- Reconciliation

Pain comes in many forms and through some of my experiences of lost relationship, I have felt unspeakable sadness. I grieve it -- the loss of safety and shared experience amongst friends. This is the painful to me, it feels fragmented and broken. I know some might say -- "ease up! people move on! get a little tougher." But I think I will always grieve it. I want the channels between me and others to be clear. I don't like barriers. I think this comes from leaving and starting again a few times in my life -- I like knowing there is a chance of moving forward together and taking care of each other. We belong to each other. 

I have a deep desire for reconciliation and wholeness in relationship. This to me feels like an unquenchable, leaving-the-door-open hope. Losing friends or broken relationships are to me an earthly picture of second best. Best case scenario is harmony and peace between everyone. It was never meant to be this way. 

My life has been filled to over-flowing with messy, real, running-over love. With a healthy bedrock of patient, intentional, intergenerational, deep-and-wide family love, I have learned good habits of trust and truth in love. My family members are among some of my greatest love-gifts I have and have the protect-each-other and build-together types of loving hearts. I also have a beautiful smattering of belly-laughing, sisterhood and brother-like friendships that ground me and teach me about love in its many forms. I have been blessed with the kind of love that draws you home and keeps you safe in my husband, Jordan, whom I call 'Love'. Daily, he shows me reckless-abandon, committed love that strengthens me and primes each day with peace in knowing I am always loved. Finally, I have a jealous King, resurrected Saviour, and kind Lord who has shown me such love and sacrifice in Jesus and through His generous grace towards me. 

I am abundantly blessed. I know deep love and feel secure in it. 

PART 4 -- Rest

I don't rest well. 

(On that note, I'm taking a break from writing. Will be back with more 'parts' soon.)

Philippians 4:19 - "And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus."

Now: rest. 

The ideas bouncing around my head come somewhat from the ideas Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009) presents in this TED talk. 

"It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is 'nkali'. It's a noun that loosely translates to 'to be greater than another.' Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person." - C.N. Adichie

Chimamanda discusses the impact of one story about a place or culture, and its deceiving impact on what people believe about the people of that place, namely, Africa. I am thinking about single stories as being told about a social place. Specifically, I'm thinking about the place where the lonely, the social outcasts, the lost and struggling in our society find themselves.

Some "single story" labels may include experiences in or histories of or self-identify as:
Abortion.   Gang Sexual Assault.   Porn Addiction.   Truancy.   Rage.   Fear.   Mental Health Issues.   Forgotten.   Sick.   Sex Work.   Substance Addiction.   Trafficking Humans or Drugs.   Trauma.   Robbery.   Assault.   Pimp.   Self-Harm.   Victim.   Homeless.  Crown Ward.   Dirty.   Used.   Broken.   Weak. 

I heard some first and second-hand experience stories today about Domestic Human Trafficking. Police, survivors, service providers, caregivers, and specialists spoke on the ways children, women, and men get lured, groomed, used and dominated by traffickers. This complex issue is one that this city's stakeholders are grappling with, as the charges of human trafficking have come to a guilty verdict for the first time in this calendar year.

Today, as I listened to how I as a social worker am encouraged to work alongside the victims of these crimes, much of the focus was placed on allowing for the individual to not 'just be' the identity as a victim, but to help them find the multiple storylines of their lives. The place of loneliness, helplessness and worthlessness where these individuals survived is all to common to people in different ways all over the neighbourhood, city, country and world.

I was more struck by the importance of my role also as a Christian in making safe spaces for these individuals to recover, discover and share their multiple storylines. I think the way the Church responds and cares for those who are otherwise rejected in many social arenas is very important.

What does the message from church have to be on the welcoming a sex worker to church? It has to be open arms. It has to be listening ears. It has to be a curiosity to learn and grow in the knowledge of hurting people's lives so that we can be effective in responding to the pain and isolation people are experiencing.  

This week at Knox we talked about Zaccheus. This is one of my favourite stories (along with A Woman Caught in Adultery and The Bleeding Woman) for thinking about how to treat these individuals who find themselves at the outskirts of society.

As a chief tax collector, Zaccheus is an exploiter of his own people; he takes their money, in large amounts, and gets rich by it. He's not very well liked. He had to climb a tree to see Jesus because he was short and no one in the crowd would like him get to the front. Jesus comes to the town and goes to Zaccheus' house, interested in relationship with him, saying he came to "seek and save what was lost."

The story that everyone in the town was telling was about Zaccheus is that he was a filthy, immoral tax collector. That's what he was (in)famous for. That's why they wouldn't let him in the front of the crowd when Jesus came by, because he wasn't one of them. But, Jesus saw Zaccheus very differently. He went to his house and welcomes him back (seek & save) from social isolation (what was lost). 

Too often it is society that shapes and frames the way I think about and judge those who stray from the norms of our Christian bubble. We are prone to snap judgements and gut reactions. We have closed doors and even placed fences around our churches with literal fences and formalities or expectations from those with complex backgrounds or who wouldn't pass a Vulnerable Sector Screening. 

We have to reframe our perspective, our view of others. We must challenge our 'othering' and figure out what we are called to have as a response to people who are different, struggling, hurting, and suffering. Compassion instead of judgement, care and not disgust, must be what pours from us. We don't need anymore dripping, mouldy rags of shame to get dragged out in a "see-they-did-it-again-way" every time people fall short of our standards of success.

Matthew 25:40 says "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

We are to introduce people to the radical Gospel grace that we have come to know in Jesus Christ. This grace means that because of repentance and forgiveness, my ugliest stories of sin and shame are covered in Jesus blood and are no longer used against me to condemn me. It's Jesus saying -- "neither do I condemn you; go now and leave your life of sin". It's Jesus greeting you at your lowest state with -- "I'm coming over to your house today."

Allowing and creating space for multiple stories in people's current realities makes a difference. I work with youth who have been charged with various offences. I often have the privilege of redirecting these young men and women by telling them I know they are more than this charge, this level of apathy, this pattern of destruction. Without fail, their faces always light up. More often than not, they have believed or been told only one story about themselves.

It is our privilege to approach and come alongside with care instead of judgement those who most need us to be listening.