I have been amazed and pleased each evening to receive updates on my friend Charlotte's state of her soul as she approaches surgery on Friday. Her latest was a marvelous anecdote illustrating the way God "shows up": a member of the choir at All Souls Cathedral quietly said to her that he knows her surgeon... and that he, the choir member, signed up to be Charlotte's anaesthesiologist on Friday.
Will has agreed to read some affirmations I am going to write as I am going under and during surgery. I was very involved in healing work when I was in Cleveland Hts, Ohio at St. Paul's Church and one of the things we did with parishioners who were going into surgery was to have them write out affirmations to be read to them during the procedure. The effects were always good, sometimes stunning. It occurred to me to do that for myself and Will is all for it. With that happening in surgery and all of you wonderful friends praying and sending good thoughts, I'll be in good hands.
One of the things I am realizing through all of this is that the experience of letting you all know what is going on is quite a movement for me. For so long, everything was held so privately and folks seldom knew what was really going on with me. The exterior always said that everything was "fine." But few saw what the truth was inside. Now, all these years later, I find myself writing openly on a web-site about how I am feeling. That, to me, is a miracle.
Indeed, and such a beautiful one to have! I read this last paragraph and felt my heart swell. These are words that my teenager could hear, and with tears in my eyes, I simply prayed, "Thanks be to God. Amen and Amen!" And again, God arrives and sharpens the focus of my seeing. The residual anger and hurt, the pain my teenager was feeling in all of this, felt addressed directly in seeing that my friend has reached a new level of self-awareness that my adult absolutely understood to be the truth. I love miracles! And I love that my friend, who is a woman of depth, is growing even deeper roots. This new wine of her will not be able to be poured back into the old wineskin. And that's a good thing!
Please continue to pray for Charlotte, Betsy, Will and the rest of Charlotte's medical team. She is a remarkable woman on a most remarkable journey.
If you'd like to listen to her sermon from this past Sunday, the 24th of January, click here.
2 comments:
The miracle of redemptive self disclosure: ++Michael Ramsey covered the theology of this in his "From Gore to Temple", tracing the development of Kenotic Christology (God in Christ revealed the divine nature most fully in self-emptying on the Cross). For us that's self disclosure and emptying may take many forms (therapy, blogging, coming out)but it is an expression of our Christology, rather than pure neurosis!
True words, frdougal. Thank you!
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