All I need is a pair of wheels…

Part of my graduate degree involves classes in psychology and therapy. These skills are important for working with people who are in psychospiritual distress. I’m not of the notion that human beings are inherently broken. I also experience my own woundedness. I am not someone who needs to be fixed. I am looking for support.

The path through psychospiritual trauma is an individual journey made in the context of caravan. My father is dead. My heart is broken. For now I am engaged in grief. Nobody else can do this for me. And I am not alone.

There is a dynamic tension between my need for growth and my taking time with my transition toward wellbeing. I come to church because I want community: nurturing, support, a sense of mutuality and interconnectivity that inspires me to live into the best of my humanness. And I hope that I am held, in the moment, as I am. Which for now means fragility.

I do not sit with woundedness easily. I don’t know too many people who would describe me this way. For the last six weeks I’ve shown strength, love, and resilience. And I secretly know that I am holding it all together with masking tape. I am internally distracted. I have two papers due that I haven’t been able to start. I look back to before November 27th, and wonder where that person is, because it’s not who I see in the mirror.

Two schools of thought: “Just get over it,” and “Just be who you need to be right now.” They both feel insufficient. How do I just get over losing somebody who I loved deeply, who was here one day and gone the next? I am not so heartless. And I don’t want to sit with this pain any longer than I have to; my life has to continue because that is what life does – it moves on.

I am left with just living well in this tension. Which means being broken and being strong. In community. I find comfort with Rumi’s wisdom:

“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.”

Perhaps in this caravan, I can safely experiment with release.