this is where I share my insights on vulnerability, about the healing power of embracing pain (and how i'm not much of a hero I thought I was).

“I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.”  -- Jean Vanier

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you." -- Rumi

The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." -- Psalm 34:18

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I haven't been doing too hot over here in Philadelphia land. 

In the past month, I've had about two meltdowns at work. What I mean by these meltdowns is this: imagine a Rachel throwing her glasses unto the floor and crumbling into tears behind a door or into the corner of a stairwell at a health center. Yup. That's what a smother of my Mission Year looks like. It's not pretty or glamorous or heroic at all. It sucks, because I didn't want to feel so weak, so out of control, so much like a "failure" upon arriving here. "Why can't I be stronger, more put together?" I thought. I wrestled with my weakness and pain the first few months of Mission Year. Now, I've come a little more to terms with the fact that I'm hurting and often have difficulty refraining from expressing it. Now, I see that it's not all together a bad thing to experience pain.

I don't write this to induce some sort of pity or to make you think that I'm suffering over here. I'm doing quite well actually.  In fact, I'm growing a lot here. My 9-ish months here has led me into a greater revelation of what it means to love G-d and neighbor, and for that I'm glad. I'm experiencing what it means to have joy and hope.

Even if I have started to learn to embrace my weakness, I don't like having these moments of weakness and vulnerability. Vulnerability for me (and probably for you, too) doesn't always look like crumbling to pieces at your volunteer site. Often, it can occur by say.... asking for help from someone I live with (so uncomfortable!) or telling someone you care about them. Vulnerability is hard, but the beautiful thing about being able to be vulnerable is that it gives an opportunity for people to love and be loved.

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of joy." -- Brene Brown

Vulnerability is is IS the birthplace of joy, I've learned, because it's the place where we allow folks to love on us and allow ourselves to have the courage to love others well, even if we don't do it perfectly. It's the place where we can heal. It's the place where G-d's love meets us.

What's soooo beautiful about the story about me crumbling into the floor in tears of anxiety and sadness is that it doesn't end there... 

In opening the door for others to see my pain, I was able to provided a space to heal. My supervisor Kathleen listened to, embraced my pain, held my face in her hands and told me that I was cared for -- even in that painful place. There's something incredibly healing and transformative about an experience like that and I'm inspired to be present and care for others in their weak places.

Despite all this beauty resulting from embracing our weak places, the beauty doesn't take away the fact that vulnerability is hard. I imagine that there are people around me who might be hurting and I might not even know: my housemates, my neighbors, co-workers. It's hard to cry out. Some have given up on their pain. We risk rejection, and it's easier to hide the messiness.

But, I want to encourage you to be that person who will listen and embrace someone who finds the courage to trust you with their story, the cries of their heart. I also want to encourage you to find someone that you can confide in when you are hurting. It can be super messy, but I have confidence that this is where healing can begin. May we have joy in recognizing that moments in which we are weak are somehow woven into the healing of the world. We don't have to bare our pain alone.

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I have so much thoughts... ALL THE THOUGHTS! on this subject. But I'll leave you here, and if you want to read more about pain and vulnerability, you should visit Kathy Escobar's blog. She's participating in writing about pain this month. Check it out by clicking here. I also recommend meditating on the Beatitudes. If you believe in my ministry here (and my journey in learning how to do ministry) in Philadelphia please considering donating to my Mission Year at missionyear.org/donate.

Peace be with thee,
Rachel

5.7.2013

“In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship .... can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…” -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

this is about the possibility that love might be at the center of the universe and that that love is worth trusting in.

I've been experiencing a lot of ups and downs the past few months. Mission Year has been tough, especially living within community. More than volunteering at Esperanza. More than reaching out to the community. These past few months have been causing me to grow up and out of old dead places in which I've spent so many years lying in.

There are people saying that they see my growth.

They're proud of me. The word left their lips. "Proud."

It's hard for me to see that growth most days. My heart has been breaking a lot. It's also been crawling closer to the truth -- the ridiculous and often ridiculous but life-giving truth -- the truth being that, i, AM beloved. Somehow.

My friend, Joel, asked me one time, if the search for transcendent love affected much of my life. And, I thought to myself "Of course." "OF COURSE DUH" I think, it does for most of us. Maybe all of us.

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I've been thinking how important it is to remember that Jesus is a person, not an idea to be debated, a mantra to be recited, an ideal to live up to, or a figure stuck behind Mexican candles and rosaries... but a person. He's a someone I can relate to. There was a man who lived and breathed one day and wandered obscure towns upon the earth, trying to love people the way G-d, the Creator of the Universe, intended for all of us to be loved. Experiencing that love for myself and being able to imagine, believe and then sit in his love is changing me. It's causing me to hope for better things.

My heart is melting despite her constant breaking lately.

When it breaks, it threatens to freeze back up again, into the jadedness, conforming to the same irritable "you're stupid, Rachel!" and "nobody cares about your shit, Rachel" that I'm used to hearing in my brain.

When I think about the love that man embodied in light of my life... when I think about the way he would respond if he were in my shoes... when I remember the promises that I will never be left by him... when I see the way the people who love him light up and love in their broken sincerity and honesty....

my heart melts.

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Sometimes, I look back at the past eight months and I notice that it wasn't what I thought it would be. I thought that by doing Mission Year, I would know what to do with my life. I thought I would narrow down the thousand passions raging in my heart down to one or two that I could allow to sail my life. I thought I would finally know what to go to school for. I thought I would find my place and my people.

Maybe I'm a little closer to those things now, but I think more than anything, I'm learning about who I want to be. I don't want to be sad anymore.
It's okay to be sad. It's okay to cry.
But, I don't want to lie in a pool of my tears.
If any tears, I wish that they could water the world around me and cause something beautiful to grow in my life. I don't want a stagnant, un-moving bucket of tears in my life anymore. I don't want to drag around in the weight of my sorrows.

Life, life that is really life, is worth fighting for.
Love, love that is really love is worth trusting in.

I don't understand much of the mysteries of the universe (maybe multiverse!), and neither do I intend to know them all. I think the biggest mystery of all is there might be Love at the center of this thing at all. I think that's what that man suffered to prove.

That G-d is love.

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P.S. I'm sorry that I've been so silent lately. There are many of you that I have wished to write or to call or see. I've been the opposite of brave and the opposite of encouraged a lot of times, but, I hope that you will forgive me, and that maybe, we can engage in having some sort of relationship again.