Last night after dinner we told ”Our Story” to a small group
of our Kerygma community.This was the
full blown version with the good, the bad and the ugly. Not Alan’s pretty 15-minute speech version that sounds so cute and
funny live. It was the real version that only family is capable of handling and
the one that only those who care, can stand to hear. The children of Israel
kind where Moses stands at the wall of the Red Sea and says, “ God, lead us
out.”
This was the real story, minus the pain and
heartache- because Jesus took that away. Minus the hate, bitterness and anger,
resentment and blame, confusion and frustration and the feeling of total
helplessness that only distance can heal. Jesus covered that as well. We didn’t
leave out any of the horrible details of abandonment by family and friends or
of each other. We didn’t point fingers.
At the end of the night, we realized how far we have come
and how Jesus has healed it all; all the secret hurt that no brother or sister
in Christ was there to share. The pain of being alone that can’t speak or reach
out for help, but gnaws at your soul until there is no hope of survival. I saw
the cocoon of pain that held us bound and helpless, wanting to envelope us
until we were strangled to death.
It is so easy to do.
Suddenly there is no life because it is much easier to not
share. It is much kinder to spare others the pain of your hardships.
Relationship requires much more than being committed to someone. It requires
communication.
Communication is hard, real communication that is.Marriages lose communication. Friendships do
as well. It is much easier to be friends with people who don’t need you.
Isolation lets Satan play havoc on your thought life and you
help the enemy wrap the cocoon of indifference around you. You hand him the
keys to your heart everyday.
The keys of choosing not to share.
The keys of silence.
The keys of hurt, and pain and bitterness.
There, in the secret parts of your heart and mind, the
emotions and thoughts of pain caused you by others run rampant and the web
called bitterness is spun. It begins to wrap itself tighter around you until
the “you” that you were, is gone.
Your soul is at stake but you don’t know it yet. The smile
on the outside coupled withthe silence
of the heart wrap the cocoon tighter until all hope is sucked out of you.
That is why there is divorce.
In this society of text messaging and Facebook, we can
distance ourselves but still look good to others. We are friendly on these
surface facades. We only want others to know the good parts that attract them
to us. They don’t really want to have us vomit all over them! They aren’t that
kind of friend.
When lives fall apart, for whatever reason, true community
is the only thing that can reach into someone’s life and fight that choice to
cut the threads of the cocoon that would suck your life out but the person
being woven up into that pain and loneliness must reach out as well.
Communication is a two way street. Even those dearest to us
might choose to walk away when vomit is all they get for their efforts. Vomit
gets harder to clean off. It smells and is dirty. You get tired of changing
your clothes so you turn your back and walk off.
Jesus will come to help you.
His hand will reach down and fight off the enemy. He alone
will take back the keys and put them in right order. He alone can instantly cut
the cords that you allow to wind themselves around you. He will give you your
mind back if you will just ask.
The smallest cry for help He hears.
Because He is a good God.
In our case, we asked God to break us of the World and the
ties that we had to it. Wedidn’t know
the cost of that world but we were willing- we thought. The road has been full
of pits and darkness, thorns and barriers of every kind and much of our pain
was self inflicted. Blame can’t win.
In the end, the Cross of Christ is all that has saved and
healed us. Our marriage is stronger because our relationship with Jesus isstronger. The search for more kept us committed to each other, even through the
pain. It ended in the open doors of the Rock we were clinging to but never
where we expected: in the arms of the Catholic Church.
There, in the silence of the Eucharist, we have followed and
found our salvation and peace. Just as Moses and the Children followed the
cloud by day and the fire by night we too have taken our little tribe through
the sea and around the desert. Sometimes we went in circles. We have crossed
into the Promised Land and found it to be a land full of milk and honey and all
the good things that we had heard were here. We have the scars to prove it.
Scars fade. The victory remains because we choose to tell “Our Story” to real
family.
So he led them according to the integrity of his heart
and he guided them by the skillfulness of his hands. Psalm 78:74
Isolation lets Satan play havoc on your thought life and you
help the enemy wrap the cocoon of indifference around you. You hand him the
keys to your heart everyday. 
stronger. The search for more kept us committed to each other, even through the
pain. It ended in the open doors of the Rock we were clinging to but never
where we expected: in the arms of the Catholic Church.
