Tag: love

Creating Encounter: In the Bathtub

On By Keren Dibbens-WyattIn Building Lakelight, Creating Encounter4 Comments

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If we can welcome God into anything at all, can we even ask him into mundane things like bathing and showering? I believe we can.  It’s not that long since Maundy Thursday, when we remember Jesus washing the Disciples’ feet. Many churches and Christian bodies choose to commemorate this act of love by having the priests or ministers do the same for members of their congregation or the local community. But this act of Jesus, done on the same night as those feet would, in almost all cases, run away and even betray him, is also an act of cleansing and of grace.

Jesus knew what was going to happen. He had tried to explain it many times to his followers. Still he chose to symbolically show this band of men that his servant heart could reach down even to touch and minister to their dusty smelly feet, and if that was possible, then maybe their Lord and ours might even condescend willingly to cleanse our dirty but contrite souls.

Washing for me has been an exhausting and difficult business since I got ill over twenty years ago. I’ve not been able to bathe myself or wash my own hair since my last relapse over two years ago, and so I have to rely on my husband to do it for me. We have a system that’s working okay, and a bath cushion from social services that can lift me in and out when I am too weak to even do that. It is hard to have no independence in any area, but this one is particularly galling.

I used to enjoy a long hot bubble bath, or, back when I could stand for long enough (before I was ill) an invigorating power shower. I would love to be able to do those things again, unaided, and feel really clean and fresh every day. If I could, I don’t think it would be something I’d ever take for granted, much as anyone who has had to live without running water could also make gratitude a great part of their ablutions.

As it is, love washes me. Love patiently helps me in and out, washes me gently, dries me with care. I am blessed to have someone love me in this helpless state, and to do so without any hint of pity. Vulnerability and dependence both generate a deep humility and gratitude. Every time, it reminds me of the kind of love that God administers to us by his grace and I am so thankful. Yes, it is difficult, and yes, I pray beforehand that we will be helped, because it is so exhausting and I always feel nauseated by the physical effort and hot water, but because each time an uncomplaining kindness is extended to me, this too is made an encounter with our loving God.

Text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt Photo from Pixabay

Mother’s Day Prayer

On By Keren Dibbens-WyattIn PrayersLeave a comment

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Prayer for Mothering Sunday.

Dear Lord, you are our parent, the best of mothering and fathering. Today we thank you for our earthly mothers but also lift to you those for whom this will be a painful day. We ask you to be with those of us who are pained every day by those things that separate us from giving or receiving a mother’s love; whether that is by bereavement or estrangement, loss or abuse, distance or incarceration.

Lord we pray for those who know the pain of childlessness, of separation or of loss; for those who bear difficult, strained child/parent relationships, and those who feel uncared for or unloved or unappreciated on a day that celebrates things they do not have or have never known.  Lord, gather all those in such pain under your wings as a mother hen gathers her chicks, and give them understanding, consolation, peace, reassurance and protection from further hurt.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

©Keren Dibbens-Wyatt, photo from Pixabay

On Not Being History Makers

On By Keren Dibbens-WyattIn Foundations4 Comments

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There are lots of self-discovery books and courses out there in the wide world. Some of the Christian ones are worth a look. When younger, I found John Ortberg’s “The Me I Always wanted to be” helpful as well as Bruce Wilkinson’s “The Dream Giver,” Joyce Meyer’s “How to Succeed at Being Yourself: Finding the Confidence to Fulfil Your Destiny” and Rick Warren’s ubiquitous “The Purpose Driven Life”. But I would caution people against getting gung-ho about pursuing their identity and purpose in the Lord. For just as it worries me to see churches investing so much time and energy in mission statements and vision steering committees instead of studying Acts and investing in unity, discipleship, mission and prayer; so it worries me too that many spiritual writers seem to think that we need to ask God for a mountain to climb, a hard path to travel or a monster to slay. Besides which, I want to be the me God wants me to be. That might be something quite different than I imagine. And my “destiny” might be to just sit in this room and pray a couple of times a day. It’s not often stuff that would make Cecil B. De Mille drool, is it, this life?

No, the Christian path, it seems to me, is quite hard enough as it is. The Lord and his guidance are easier to find if you approach them with a humble heart, meekly and in the knowledge that if there’s a mountain to climb, he will show you the way to the foothills first. Likewise, if there’s a great task to be accomplished, it will begin most likely in frustration, with a need for faith and trust. Let’s not rush things and ask for great things to do, we shall only fall at the first hurdle and feel like idiots. God shall say gently, “See?” and pick us up from the dust. Only give him your heart and your will, and all shall become clear. These are small and difficult enough beginnings.

Besides which, our destinies may end up looking from the outside, far less dramatic than some modern texts would have us believe. Let us not forget that Jesus described our role in the world as that of yeast and salt; unseen and unnoticed influences for the most part. Yeast works slowly and steadily to change things, it does not announce its presence from mountaintops.   Christians are most noticeable, for the most part, by their absence. A wonderful exposition of this point is found in Dennis Lennon’s book “Weak enough for God to use.”

“We are inclined to look over the head of the commonplace, searching for divine fireworks in the night sky. But the Creator loves his Creation and honours it by coming to us clothed in its familiar ordinariness.”

For some of us, the heroics of the day will be getting our elderly mother onto the commode, or biting our anger back when she accuses us of eating the dessert she had half an hour ago and now cannot remember eating. The legacy we leave the world might be the patience and kindness we show when our alcoholic brother has snuck out of the house with our credit card for the fourteenth time. The good example we lead by could be the silence we choose not to fill with raging expletives in front of the children when their new puppy has shredded the cushions again. These might seem like small things, but they are not. It is in these holdings and gentlings, this giving space and forgiveness, that we are being Christlike, rather than in any great visible achievement.

This is why real love is our greatest teacher. Not the romantic ideal of fairy tales, or the apparent perfection touted on the cover of Hello magazine, but the down-in-the-depths, dealing with chronic illness, trying to do our best by people who will never appreciate it, thinking of small kindnesses, saying prayers for which no-one will ever congratulate us, sitting with someone we have never seen before or will ever see again whilst they wait for an ambulance, listening to the same story ten times in one hour from a loved one with Alzheimer’s and smiling with them each time, kind of love. These are opportunities to be ambassadors for Christ, and when we miss them, we miss some of the greatest chances we will ever have to grow in love.

Each tiny act of kindness, of calming our own inner turmoil before replying, of counting to ten and smiling, these are the stones, or even pebbles* on which Christ builds his church. I do not find it helpful when we are made to feel failures because we have not become missionaries in Lesotho or surgeons working for Médicins Sans Frontières, or when we read something that makes us feel like we missed our vocation in life because we didn’t get ordained or write a thesis on transubstantiation. Whilst all those things are wonderful, most of us aren’t going to be doing that. And that’s okay, and we didn’t necessarily get it wrong or miss the way.

We have ample chances each day to live out the love of God, and some of them we’ll miss. Others we’ll hit out of the ball park and no-one but him will see. It is not about being seen. It’s about the loving. And in that loving, we become the Body of Christ, a very real ordinary flesh becoming sacred “transubstantiation” ourselves. We may never be mentioned in the history books, but our names are written in another book, and that one will turn out to be far more important.

©Keren Dibbens-Wyatt Photo from Pixabay

(this piece was adapted from a section in my 2015 book, “Positive Sisterhood”).

 

*When Jesus renames Simon as Peter, he uses the word petros, meaning a small rock or pebble, such as might be found along a road, but then goes on to use the word petra, meaning a mass or foundation of rock, in the same sentence, as the base on which he will build the Church. “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” Matthew 16:18 NIV

 

On Not Being Enough

On By Keren Dibbens-WyattIn FoundationsLeave a comment

ancient-1807518_1920 EDITORIAL ONLY

When you are sick, or disabled, or poor, or lost, or trembling in the dark, or different, the world will begin to tell you that you are not enough. It will whisper at first, saying that you don’t belong, that you are the wrong fit, that you are not welcome. It will be like an evil breeze, a soft harshness that sounds a little bit like truth, and because you do not feel whole, you will give it houseroom. You will let it in and allow it to wander through the corridors, because, why not?, they are dark and dreary anyway, filled with your own pain. What harm does giving in do? It is just another whooshing sound rushing through the emptiness.

When you are hyper and joyful and skyrocketing, or multi-talented or very, very bright, the world will tell you that you are too much. It will say that you are too large, too overwhelming and too loud. It will give you pills and tut at you from unseen corners and threaten you with sanctions and punishment. And you will take the tablets and hide parts of yourself until they begin to atrophy, and the rage that you have done this to yourself will also swirl around inside and make you miserable. You will stop using long words and the hard-earned gleanings of your intelligence, stop making people laugh, and the poem that you are may lose the will to live, and never be spoken.

And the whispers and the breeze, the pills and the disapproval become louder and louder, and the corridors of your mind and the veins in your body may become, then, so full of that negative cacophony that nothing else can be heard.

And because this happens, I am here to tell you something.

You are not too much, you are just the right amount. You are exactly enough. You are not less than or more than, you are you. You are perfect. No, not without sin, not without dark thoughts, not without failings and strange quirks. But these first two are overlooked by love, and the second two only make you more like yourself.

I will not say that you are awesome or stupendous, because I know you will not believe me, and anyway these words have ceased to mean what they should. I will not tell you that you are made of stardust and have come from eternity, because these are things too far away to reach your aching heart. I will say instead that you are loved. You are looked upon with an adoring gaze such as a good mother or father first gives their child. You are held, cradled in a grace that will forgive any misdemeanour, as you walk this strange and fearful journey.

You have missed out on no medals: they do not get awarded in this life. You have not failed to reach the mark: God will always move the target for you and risk an arrow in his already pierced hands. You do not go unnoticed: every hair on your head is known and numbered, every combing monitored. It is only your sins which are not counted.

And here in this resting place of the heart, which is so much larger than it looks from the outside, you are known and comforted and given peace beyond understanding. It will say few words, and mainly it will just sit with you and rock a little back and forth and sing sweet, soft lullabies of understanding which will blow through you like a warming glow, dissipating those ill winds and sharp words. Those mean mutterings will burn up into ashes like scraps of newspaper tossed up into the fire that rages in God’s heart for you. Did you not know that you were the object of such passion?

Here then, lies the truth. At the centre of the holy family, you are welcomed and known. Before the throne of heaven, you are accepted and loved. It is not just that you are enough, but that here, where it matters, we are all beyond measuring.

 

©Keren Dibbens-Wyatt Photo from Pixabay