Week IV - Day 4 - The Unmendable Cup

A Doubter's Dictionary

The unexpected surprises of writing this Lenten journal just keep coming my way.  This morning, I have received two gifts, one a quote by Frederick Buechner from "Whistling in the Dark."

“Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling the secret of who you are, but more often than not of the mystery of where you have come from and are summoning you to where you should go next.”

The second, I am still not sure about.  It comes from a group called Lifehouse. Wikipedia says they are an alternative band from the west coast but other than that, I don't know anything about them, except...I find the words to the songs I have listened to be haunting.

Joyce begins today's lesson saying, "Sometimes there are parts of our lives that are unmendable. Like the old Humpty Dumpty rhyme, we cannot always put the pieces of our life back together again, at least not in the same way that they were before. " (Joyce Rupp, The Cup of Life, p 99)

I did not want to continue reading.  I am an idealist who wants to believe "I" can fix whatever is broken if I only work hard enough or do the right thing. Yet, the situations that Joyce lists...

Brokenness that cannot be restored.

closed institutions, lost jobs, shattered relationships, loved ones who have died, dreams never brought to birth, and permanent bodily changes from disease, aging, or accidents

  are all situations that cannot be restored.

Still, Joyce says, Although we may not be able to put the old pieces of a situation, event, or experience back together again, we can still mend our spirits. (Ibid)


The Serenity Prayer expresses the vital truth that we need wisdom to know when something is unmendable and when we can "know" this, we can begin to heal.  Old hurts, heartaches, memories, destructive behavior and any other deep wound doe not have to break us apart forever.

I have journaled several times in the past few weeks of finding a new inner strength.  It is not for the fainthearted to step forward toward wholeness...because some times those steps mean leaving someone or something behind or to take action to put pieces back together again...accepting my responsibility within the brokenness. But then there are other times when our woundedness comes from situations that CANNOT be mended. Joyce says,

"...there comes a time when we have to cease our attempts to put those pieces of our life together. The healing of our spirit will come when we let go of the past, stop trying to have things be as they used to be, get on with our lives, and tend to what is before us." (Rupp, p 100)

The Twelve Step Program has a step of making an "inventory" of your life.  Joyce uses that same idea today, suggesting that today can be a day to take an inventory of my life to see if there are any fragments that cannot be mended and, if so, to give them my good-bye.

Looking at this image I thought how saying good-bye is a little like the Yes/No.  Saying good-bye allows me to say hello to something new.


Breathprayer:
Breathing in: Let the past be...
Breathing out: ...let the past be.


Reflection:
Ponder the cup as it lays on its side before you.
Is there anything in your life that seems unable to "rise-up."
Think about the possibility of it not being mendable.
Are you at peace with letting go of it?
Ask God for what you need in order to be healed.

Pick up the cup and hold it, upright, in your hands.
Ask God to give you wisdom and courage to let go of any old pain and difficulties that keep you in bondage.

Behold, I am doing a new thing!

Scripture: Isaiah 43:14-21
Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Journaling:
Pieces of my life that I cannot "fix" and need to leave behind me are...


Write a dialogue with a part of your "broken" past.


Dear God, please grant me wisdom to know...

Dear God, so many situations have filled my heart as I have written, read, and listened to the various videos, thoughts, insights that  have come my way this morning.  Expectations that have not been fulfilled within relationships.  Expectations of myself.  Expectations of institutions and organizations.

Expectations....

I found this funny little bird that actually holds a lot of truth, that I do not want to consider.

God, yesterday was a grand example of "my" expectations of myself, being unrealistic.  I constantly compare myself to women my own age and think, "If they can do this, then I SHOULD be able to do this!"  I really get discouraged with myself when women who are ten years older than I manage to do things that are difficult for me physically.  My spirit is willing....but this broken body of mine has limitations that I find difficult to accept.

Lord, yesterday I preached on the miracle of Lazarus' resurrection.  I preached that the miracle we ask for, does not always appear as we hope, yet...within all circumstances resurrection can occur and you can be glorified.

Help me to walk the talk.  Help me to accept that which I cannot change and to live fully within the gift of this day....not looking back....not looking forward....just being present in the moments I have now.

Help me to let go of expectations I have had of myself lately and to relax within the gifts of relationships...that my worrying about my next steps have made difficult.

Lord, help me to forgive myself...

Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. ~ The Serenity Prayer


Today: Joyce asks that,  I will let go of one of the pieces of my past that cannot be mended.


The Wednesday Lunch Bunch has spent time reflecting on "Wisdom" within Joyce's book being referred to as "she".  I have explained that Wisdom/Spirit...is seen by many as the "female" side of God.  This morning, I thought others might have wondered about the "SHE" pronoun.

Lady Wisdom calls out to us...

In the Book of Proverbs, Wisdom is a woman.  “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,” she says (Proverbs 8:22).  She was there when he made the heaven, the sea, the earth.  It was as if he needed a woman’s imagination to help him make them, a woman’s eye to tell him if he’d made them right, a woman’s spirit to measure their beauty by.  “I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,” she says (Proverbs 8:30), as if it was her joy in what he was creating that made creation bearable, and that’s why he created her first.

Wisdom is a matter not only of the mind but of the intuition and heart, like a woman’s wisdom.  It is born out of suffering as a woman bears a child.  It shows a way through the darkness the way a woman stands at the window holding a lamp.  “Her ways are ways of pleasantness,” says Solomon, then adding, just in case there should be any lingering question as to her gender, “and all her paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:17).

Prayers and blessings that your day holds a moment when you sense the presence of God, that you have a moment of Divine focus, and that you know peace within this journey.

Many Blessings ~ Sandi

Week IV - The Broken Cup

I have become like a broken vessel. ~ Psalm 31:12

Is it possible to grow
without brokenness?

"I was offering a Lenten retreat day based on the image of the cup and had just stopped speaking in order to take a morning coffee break with the group, I looked up and there, coming toward the podium, was a woman in her early fifties. She was wobbling, leaning heavily on a five-pronged cane, her head shaking from side to side. When she came up to me I could barely understand her speech. She tried to tell me how a severe asthma attack caused a coma that left her with brain damage. This brave, wounded woman had begun learning to talk and walk all over again."She had struggled to walk to the front of the room in order to tell me about the cup she had brought with her. She said she had no idea what the day was about other than that she was to bring a cup with her. Then she showed me her cup.The handle had been broken off leaving two sharp poking edges in its place. I gasped. It couldn't have been a better symbol for what had recently happened to her." (Joyce Rupp, The Cup of Life, p 87)

January 1998 my life was forever changed.  I was a passenger in a car that flipped three times and rolled twice. My neck was broken at C2 and because of my twisting/turning within the seat belt, I had spinal cord damage as well. There are many things about the weeks that followed that are only a blur, but two images that remain sharp in my mind was 1. the day my PT stood me up between those brass parallel bars so I could begin the process of learning how to walk and 2. the painstakingly slow process of helping me get my thought processes to work.

Broken. Repaired, Discovering
a  new way of be-ing.

Eighteen months later, I attended my first meeting with a group that I was to have begun meeting with in January of '98.  After we adjourned, a woman helped me to my car and express sadness that I had experienced such a bad time. I was caught off guard and had to think...then I responded, "I like the person I am becoming. I don't know if I would be where I am today without that car accident."

"The broken cup reminds me of those times when hurts, wounds, pains, and adversities of all sorts invade our lives and change us forever. During these times all we can do is try to survive, slowly recover, and start anew." (Rupp, p 88)

There is brokenness that is severe and requires a lot of time to repair...and to then discover a new way of be-ing. There is also brokenness that consists of daily obstacles and simple irritations. It might be the daily pain following an accident, it might also be the "run of bad luck" we sometimes have to navigate.

"Whatever the difficulty that we experience, it can be a source of our spiritual growth. So much depends on how we view these pieces of brokenness and what we do or do not do with them." (Ibid)

Joyce quotes Madeleine L'Engle who wrote: "I look back at my mother's life and I see suffering deepening and strengthening it. In some people I have also seen it destroy. Pain is not always creative; received wrongly, it can lead to alcoholism and madness and suicide. Nevertheless without it we do not grow." (Walking On Water)

I have journaled before that it seems like with each turn of the page, Joyce asks me to go deeper, to peel back another layer of my cocoon. Today she writes:

"What would happen if we met our frustrations, pains, and heartache as we would met a visitor having something to teach us? What if we lingered a bit with our brokenness and asked it to help us to grow? What might we learn from those pieces of our lives that are still wanting and incomplete? (Ibid)

Advil PM and Biofreeze
my bedtime companions.

Rather than doing my best to numb the constant pain that I experience...embrace it and ask it to help me grow...to learn from those pieces of my life that ares still wanting and incomplete?


"...that part of your life that empties you or fragments you - to discover how it has been, or can be, a teacher for your growth. It is also a week to find comfort as you pray about the strength and shelter of God and to deepen your hope as you reflect on aspects of healing." (Rupp, p 89)

Pondering growth that is
within difficult times.

             Joyce suggests you and I turn our cup on its side to remind us of the pain and powerlessness of being broken.  She asks that we leave the cup on its side unless the day's prayer indicates otherwise.  Also, she asks that we put a seed or a packet of seeds by your cup for this week. "Let it remind you of how the seed's husk must be broken open before the green shoot comes forth. May it also remind you of the power for personal growth that is within your difficult times."

Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott has written, "Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work, and you don't give up."

Hope begins in the dark.

Hope....

Yesterday I asked my friend if it was possible to grow without brokenness.  At the time I had not looked ahead to know that Week IV of Joyce's book would be The Broken Cup. For the next six days: 1. Joy and Sorrow, 2. The Cup of Suffering, 3. My Cup of Tears, 4. The Unmendable Cup, 5. Recognizing Resistances, and 6.The Mended Cup.

. Praise You In This Storm - Casting Crowns  

Powerful words that have offered me the gift of hope, 

a moment of insight...so many times.

Many Blessings ~ Sandi

Casting Crowns

Week III - Day 7 - The Chipped Cup - Integration and Review

Brokenness

Charles E. Cowman writes: God uses most for His glory those people and things which are most perfectly broken. The sacrifices He accepts are broken and contrite hearts. It was the breaking down of Jacob's natural strength at Peniel that got him where God could clothe him with spiritual power. It was breaking the surface of the rock at Horeb, by the stroke of Moses' rod that let out the cool waters to thirsty people.

It was when the 300 elect soldiers under Gideon broke their pitchers, a type of breaking themselves that the hidden lights shone forth to the consternation of their adversaries. It was when the poor widow broke the seal of the little pot of oil, and poured it forth, that God multiplied it to pay her debts and supply means of support.

It was when Esther risked her life and broke through the rigid etiquette of a heathen court, that she obtained favor to rescue her people from death. It was when Jesus took the five loaves and broke them, that the bread was multiplied in the very act of breaking, sufficient to feed five thousand. It was when Mary broke her beautiful alabaster box, rendering it henceforth useless, that the pent-up perfume filled the house. It was when Jesus allowed His precious body to be broken to pieces by thorns and nails and spear, that His inner life was poured out, like a crystal ocean, for thirsty sinners to drink and live.

It is when a beautiful grain of corn is broken up in the earth by DEATH, that its inner heart sprouts forth and bears hundreds of other grains. And thus, on and on, through all history, and all biography, and all vegetation, and all spiritual life, God must have BROKEN THINGS.

Those who are broken in wealth, and broken in self-will, and broken in their ambitions, and broken in their beautiful ideals, and broken in worldly reputation, and broken in their affections, and broken ofttimes in health; those who are despised and seem utterly forlorn and helpless, the Holy Ghost is seizing upon, and using for God's glory. "The lame take the prey," Isaiah tells us.

Strength in my brokenness

I appreciated how Charles reminded me about all the brokenness in scripture and how, within that brokenness, God worked. When I read, "God must have BROKEN THINGS." I stopped...

"...every old scar shows from every time
I broke...and worth a higher price..."

As a woman, raised in a Christian home, my story of who I am comes from many stories of brokenness.  Without brokenness...I would not be the person I am!  And when I say that, I refer not only to the stories of scripture but to my own stories as well. Stories that come from a car accident when I was 5 y.o. which was followed by years of plastic surgery to another car accident forty years later when I broke my neck and had spinal cord injury....and all that happened between and since. The Japanese Bowl that Peter Mayer sings about...the bowl with its cracks filled in gold? What a wonderful way to look at my brokenness!

What a wonderful insight to hold, "God must have broken things..."

"Loving Creator, I come to you with my strengths and my weaknesses, with my light and dark sides. I ask your blessing to be upon me. May I accept and love myself, while I also stretch and grow into ever greater wholeness." (adapted Joyce Rupp, The Cup of Life, p 162)

Joyce began the section of The Chipped Cup with a wonderful poem. I liked the entire poem, yet there were some phrases that stood out for me: "...to see the flaws of myself and stop being alarmed.." , "slowly evolving growth the kind that comes in God's own good time and pays no heed to my panicky pushing..",  "...to love my incompleteness..." , and "if I wait to be perfect before I love myself, I will always be unsatisfied and ungrateful..."

The Wednesday Lunch Bunch talked last week about perfectionism.  Most of the group claimed that they were not perfectionist!  I would have said the same thing before reading this chapter.  When I think of a perfectionist I have an image of everything being perfect.   Someone who is uptight.  Someone who is just plain strange!

I do not want to be that kind of person, and I know the Lunch Bunch did not want to be that kind of person, yet, this week I have come to recognize I do have a streak of perfectionism and that it creates an obstacle of sorts between myself and God. 

My perfectionism shows up by my not being happy with "who" I am.  I criticize and compare myself to others rather than celebrating the "me".  "Me" who is a created and cherished child of God.

This past week Joyce challenged me to acknowledge my Shadow.  This week opened my heart to new insights.  I realized there is growth that occurs within my shadow, it is not something I need to keep hidden from myself.  When I consider "shadow" in negative terms, it causes self-doubt and fear to push out my healthy self.  

Mercy, Guidance, Wisdom...all learning, all opening my heart to my true "self".

This work of learning, of transforming, of becoming whole...is hard!  Yet, as I remain faithful to the readings and the journaling, I can sense healing.

Remember the butterflies at Callaway Gardens?  They do not fly until they spread their wings, which act as sort of a solar cell of energy.

That is a bit like this work through Joyce's The Cup of Life. Each reading, each time of journaling helps recharge my "solar cell"...this work fills me with God's energy.  Joyce has talked about you and I being "God's Song" in this world.  I want my life to be a song...

I am leaving my sabbath time today with a heart that is full, yet open.  It is full of peace, joy, and hope.  Like I journaled last night, I still have a lot of "STUFF" on my plate, yet these moments of quiet help me step through them with a bit more sanity than I might have had without.

God, I ask that you continue walking alongside me today.  Teach me to see myself as your beloved and to rest in that love. God, help me appreciate and love my brokenness! Teach me to see how all the pieces of my brokenness make something beautiful. God, help me allow you to work through me to become your song! AMEN.

And Now My Lifesong Sings - Casting Crowns.

Many Blessings ~ Sandi