I continue to be cemented in the word “healing.” I initially took a few days off to attend a women’s retreat, but I did not sign up by the deadline. I had the dates approved, so I decided it was a wonderful time for a much needed staycation. Since this was scheduled for a retreat, I decided I wanted to be intentional about my time. I wanted to rest and read. I find it so fascinating when a book from your past- you meant to read but never got to- finds you again and in a moment when you were open to it’s message.
Feed My Shepherds: Spiritual Healing and Renewal for those in Christian Leadership, by Flora Slosson Wuellner is a book that I received the month I started work as a youth minister in Virginia in mid-2003. I was a seminary student at the time and began work, in what I thought was my calling in ministry. I learned after 2+ years that youth ministry was not my calling, but through the mentorship of my senior pastor at the time answered my call to hospital chaplaincy, beginning that journey mid-2006. This is another story for another time.
I began to understand if I had read this book at the time I received it, I don’t believe I would have absorbed and appreciated what it had to say then. I was young, naive, and thought I lived on a spiritual mountain with my tent set up just as Peter had hoped when Jesus transfigured himself before him. (Luke 9:28-36) I was ready to love the youth, their families, and the congregation. I was all in. I didn’t need a book telling me I need renewal and healing. I loved my mountain top and I was at that time in my life ready to take on the world. I love mountain tops, but I have hated valleys. Valleys have equated to me pain, loneliness, giving up, little faith, and I was terrified of ending up in one, or someone more pious than me finding me in one. (Maybe it was my 7 wing keeping me high!)
This has since changed. Obviously in 20 years I have lived a lot more life, hit my share of walls, had some pretty painful losses and through 4.5 years of sobriety, come to know myself in a whole, alive and complete way. I’ve lived in some valleys for periods of time where I never knew if I would ever come back up, feeling God truly silent and not understanding this was a time of growth and gaining clarity and perspective. I’ve found myself in a season of winter for the last several years. I’ve had some really great losses, been isolated, engaged a new way of ministry that is hands off and technological, accumulated vicarious trauma and incredible fatigue that led to complete burnout on all cylinders, all the while keeping a demeanor of “everything’s ok” and “I’m fine.” I know many can relate.
All I have wanted is to leave this season of winter and find new life and some sense of spring. For today I am grateful. For what I have experienced, lost and lived through, I am grateful. In the beginning of Wuellner’s book she speaks to spiritual desolation. What a cold and defeated place this is. I believe many of us don’t realize we are here until we are. I thought going through the motions of church was enough. I had left church all together for several years after my time as a youth minister- depleted, hurt, and bewildered. Coming back to the church was what I thought it meant to be fed, on a Sunday. It was the motions. Fake it til you make it. However, I had a lot of hurts to heal and I didn’t know the half of them until recently. I was so angry at God that I couldn’t see beyond my anger to even name it until I started spiritual direction and got honest with myself.
Wuellner writes, “No one had taught me that if the branch detaches itself from the vine and tries to be a vine itself, it will wither and die. No one had pointed out that if a shepherd is not fed as well as the sheep, that shepherd will begin to starve and may end up devouring the sheep… or a shepherd determined to “die to self” may allow the sheep to devour him or her! … We have all seen (and some times experienced) ministries that have become a hemorrhage, a dying, rather than a fulfilling and fulfilled life.” Sitting with these honest words I realize that I never asked for help. I didn’t want help. I didn’t trust help to come. I wanted to do it on my own and I worked so hard to find a way to do it. Me in my mid-30s would have never seen possible me today in my early 40s. I even laugh at myself and think, who is this?!
I had shut down all the understanding and embedded theology of my youth, naming it bad, harmful, and bull-sh*t. Some of it very much is and was. However, weeding my way through the bad to find the good, I have found my way back to a Jesus that I know and love and that has been the most healing experience for me spiritually. Loving God and getting to know God again, cultivate an open and healing relationship with a loving, forgiving, compassionate, grace-filled God of my adult understanding is helping me heal. The book speaks about Jesus as a Healer. A healer of our hurts. This image I have been able to allow into my psyche and sit down with and let tend to my tender places. I needed help and I am so grateful I found the courage to be honest, be broken, be me, wonder and ask.
May all seek and find.
The Journey Home 