Mother Courage

The little naked-butt word that escapes the rigorous sentinel of my Internal Editor, turns out to be a kindness of sort. The raw energy of its un-Photo-shopped truth does its magic inside our group.  It scrub-cleans our ears, dull from being accustomed to hearing only what others think we want to hear. 

She volunteers to be next.  The seasoned veteran in the business of service, sacrifice and self-negation.  Mother to many.  Faithful, dutiful wife of a respected leader. Mostly invisible accessory to a greater mission.

On the outside her bowl is beautiful and rich and full of opportunities and experiences the rest of us can only dream about. Fascinating people and exotic places. We’ve known each other for years and I never bothered to look, to ask what’s on the inside.  Perhaps I wasn’t ready for what I may find there.  

The bowl she brings to our communion table is full of emptiness, and loneliness and depression, and meds that work and don’t, and an ocean of unshed tears over a lifetime of losses. She attaches a label to herself that makes my heart sag.

Somewhere along the way she got branded. Her vast capacity for experiencing the exquisite joy of this life as well as its gut-wrenching grief is now reduced to a mental illness tag.  To be numbed by alternating the assortment of religious platitudes and daily dose of Prozac.

We listen to each other and bow our hearts to the One who knows us better than we know ourselves. Worn out from carrying our own, we lift up each other’s bowl to Jesus.

She wraps up our prayers by praying for me.

Thank you, Lord, for these three daily pages of longhand vomit, she says. Maybe it's time for me to start my own...

A woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse— after hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak.  For she thought, “If I just touch His garments, I will get well.”  Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My garments?” And His disciples said to Him, “You see the crowd pressing in on You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’” And He looked around to see the woman who had done this. But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your affliction.” Mark 5:25-34