embrace means acknowledgment

I say embrace, you say; YES.

I say welcome, you say; thank you.

I say good morning, you say; how are you?

I say have a good day, you say; you too.

I say anger, you say; No not me.

I say self, you think but don’t respond.

I say help, you say; with what?

I say God, you probably think of yourself.

I say angry, you say; at who?

I say angry at God, you think; Uh oh.

I say SHIT, you think; Oh my, don’t cuss.

I say failing to listen is more egregious than cussing!

I say embrace means acknowledgment that God is big enough to handle my anger, big enough to handle me. If he is not, the is he really God? If Jesus cannot handle my anger, your anger, my pain and your pain, then the cross and resurrection were nothing more than a myth, a fairytale of Roman history. But when the incarnation of the living God says; I say give me all of yourself so that I might make you whole, it means a giving all of yourself. Worship then moves from the “false self” to the reality of authenticity, it moves into the reality of the relationship.  Healing of brokenness is incomplete when I am unwilling to acknowledge that I am still broken in many areas, e.g. it’s a bad scar that still hurts.

Matthew 22:39 “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” If you don’t love yourself, then you cannot truly love your neighbor.

How then do you embrace yourself?

people are not diseases

An interesting fact I have discovered over the years of my professional medical career is a persons association of identity with their diagnosis, that is they take on their disease thus it becomes their identity. This is also true with other labels such as homelessness. I have shifted my language to reflect a different perspective. This means I state: “Jimmy has Depression, or Lucie is a woman who is homeless.”

We are more than the sum of our parts and are created in the image of a living and loving God, who views men and woman as valuable and not disposable. When people lean into situational identity, I think they lean into a position of vulnerability in the sense that they are objects.

Am I fake…?

I would say that I move back and forth between fake and authenticity. Take yesterday, I was having lunch with a friend, and it seemed like everyone (not everyone, but indulge my drama) wanted to eat with me. Toward the end of the conversation, the guy sitting next to us, whose name I cannot remember, left. At that point I became aware of my excluding him from the conversation. Not in words, but in my actions. It was a subconscious intentionality of not making eye contact. Part of me felt like it was an intrusion, and the rest of me felt uncomfortable. I say this does not make anyone fake, just human. I believe we should permit ourselves to be a little more human, and attempt to stop faking our holiness; that is becoming more authentic in our misconceptions, mistakes, failed perceptions, or just overall lack of accepting ourselves as we are. I think the person I call Lord and Savior, that’s Jesus, has less trouble than I do at accepting me. How about you?

-Pnorrod