Do you feel it? Today, as plastic Easter eggs lay empty around my house, I’m feeling the post-Easter tension. The tomb is empty! The temple curtain is torn in two. Everything has changed. The Spirit of the living God now dwells in me.
And also… brokenness is still incredibly present. In me. In those I love. In the world around us. Where are you feeling the brokenness today?
Perhaps it’s in a broken relationship. The teammate you wanted as a soulmate now feels like an enemy.
Maybe it’s in your child. Their mental health is a rollercoaster you don’t know how to ride.
Maybe it’s in the poverty and violence that fill the streets, not across the world, but outside your door.
Perhaps it’s the childhood wounds that won’t go away. The instincts your brain won’t unlearn.
Or the knotted family dynamics beyond hope of untangling.
Or the mountain-high pile of losses that will topple if touched.
The endless needs, the fitful nights, the never-enough energy.
The lousy leadership, the lack of funds, the longing unfulfilled.
The diagnosis, the accident, the betrayal.
The tragic unanswered “Why?”
Brokenness is real…
Where are you feeling it today?
It was on a day like today, when the brokenness hung heavy, that I asked God what he had for us in this year’s Velvet Ashes Retreat. And the whispered response was…
“Healing.”
Ah. Yes. We need that.
As I sit with women, I hear it. As I scroll through our membership conversations, I see it. I feel it in myself.
We want to go deeper with God. We want to receive from God. We want to grow in God.
And yet there’s this jagged broken thing that we keep bumping into.
What about this, Jesus?
“Yes, I’d like to tend to that,” he replies.
And often we respond with, “Ok, great. But now is not a good time. I have way too much to do.”
Or maybe your response is,“No, I can’t go there. I just can’t. I don’t have it in me.”
I recorded a podcast with Denise where we talk about what is actually happening in our nervous systems when we have these responses. What do we need when we’re in an over-functioning state of anxiety, or a numbed out state of disconnect? What is God’s invitation to us?
Is God inviting you to unwind and rest in him?
Is God inviting you to engage and connect with him?
Modern science is affirming what Christian contemplatives have been experiencing for centuries. Healing and spiritual experiences are fostered when we unwind our minds and engage our souls, when we rest our bodies and connect our hearts.
This is the invitation of the Velvet Ashes Retreat. As I invited Kristen Vincent and Rebecca Hamlin and Eine Blume to partner with me leading different parts of the retreat, we were amazed at the way it flowed together in ways we hadn’t even planned. We had the sense that this retreat was being personally and tenderly crafted for someone’s healing.
Is that someone you?
Come bring your brokenness, all the jagged bits. Come and receive the tending of Jesus.
Because the brokenness is real…
but so is the healing.
Access for our Velvet Ashes Retreat is now open! Get all the info and register here. Jesus’ tending awaits you.
Where are you feeling the brokenness today? How can we pray for you?
