February 3rd
February 3rd
It’s all about story, isn’t it? Everything needs a narrative, even a board game. And so I’ve been making flow charts. And we are always trying to make sense of our story, making flow charts in our minds and hearts.
Doing this challenge has already shown me so much more of my story, and my interpretation of it (yes, I’ve listened to the WAH podcasts on interpretation. Many times. I’ve needed them).
It’s been hard to believe that you want to be with me in the small domestic things, and doing this is revealing that, oh so gently. I choose to do this with you Jesus, and I want that with all of me – but I am out of practice, out of habit. It isn't that I want to shut you out, want to exclude you from parts of my life. Not at all. It's that I think I'm supposed to be able to cope.
And I know where that comes from, know where I lost that particular intimacy: and oddly enough you spoke to me about it through pictures of board games!
Four years of undiagnosed post-natal depression. Four years of not being able to hear you for myself, not being able to connect with you as I had once done. In a church-the-institution (not the same thing as church-the-body-of-Christ, though there’s often great overlap) that had a theology that said, Christians don’t get depression and also, If things aren’t working between you and God, then it’s because you’ve sinned.
And I couldn’t find the sin. And I ended up believing that the sin must have been to have a child, in wedlock, by my husband. How did I repent of that?
I couldn’t find my way onto the board game that everyone assured me I was playing: Happy Family Picnic, sitting under the trees on a lovely summer’s day, all in bright, clear colours.
And then you showed me: no, what I was playing in those years was called Fate of the Galaxy, on a dark and swirling board with far more at stake than ants stealing your egg sandwich.
But they were hard years, because I didn’t know the story and I lost the habit of intimacy in the small because I couldn’t find it, couldn’t find you Jesus. And now I feel like I’m pushing open long-closed doors to find that habit again.
Doing this challenge has already shown me so much more of my story, and my interpretation of it (yes, I’ve listened to the WAH podcasts on interpretation. Many times. I’ve needed them).
It’s been hard to believe that you want to be with me in the small domestic things, and doing this is revealing that, oh so gently. I choose to do this with you Jesus, and I want that with all of me – but I am out of practice, out of habit. It isn't that I want to shut you out, want to exclude you from parts of my life. Not at all. It's that I think I'm supposed to be able to cope.
And I know where that comes from, know where I lost that particular intimacy: and oddly enough you spoke to me about it through pictures of board games!
Four years of undiagnosed post-natal depression. Four years of not being able to hear you for myself, not being able to connect with you as I had once done. In a church-the-institution (not the same thing as church-the-body-of-Christ, though there’s often great overlap) that had a theology that said, Christians don’t get depression and also, If things aren’t working between you and God, then it’s because you’ve sinned.
And I couldn’t find the sin. And I ended up believing that the sin must have been to have a child, in wedlock, by my husband. How did I repent of that?
I couldn’t find my way onto the board game that everyone assured me I was playing: Happy Family Picnic, sitting under the trees on a lovely summer’s day, all in bright, clear colours.
And then you showed me: no, what I was playing in those years was called Fate of the Galaxy, on a dark and swirling board with far more at stake than ants stealing your egg sandwich.
But they were hard years, because I didn’t know the story and I lost the habit of intimacy in the small because I couldn’t find it, couldn’t find you Jesus. And now I feel like I’m pushing open long-closed doors to find that habit again.
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