Listening to My Heart
I’ve been wondering why I’ve
had a literal ache in my heart for the past week. There has been this tightness in my chest that feels different
from a pulled muscle. Often when I feel
it, there is something spiritual I need to tend to. Today I was able to name the ache. I realized it has been exactly one year ago that the church where
I had been pastor—the Cathedral of Hope--went through one of the most painful
times in its history.
I don’t want to rehash the
details here, nor do I want to relive the past. What I do want to do is acknowledge my grief a year later. Anniversary dates of our losses often cause
grief to well up in us without warning.
I was amazed that my heart remembered a week before my head did that on
July 27th, 2003, Cathedral of Hope voted to leave Metropolitan
Community Church after being a part of that denomination for 33 years. It was a vote that not only affected the
members of the congregation, it affected the Dallas glbt community and it
affected churches and religious organizations around the world.
Some of us lost friends,
some lost reputations, some lost a denomination, some lost their church, some
maybe even lost their faith. And those
kinds of losses run deep. So deep that
our bodies remember them on a cellular level.
I am not suggesting that we
wallow in our grief. But I do believe
it is helpful and healing to acknowledge the pain of our losses and to invite
God into those spaces.
And so today I pray this
prayer for myself, and I offer it for anyone who is grieving the events of a
year ago, as well as any other loss in their life:
Holy Available One, I bring
my aching heart to you. Time does help
to heal wounds, but more than time, I ask for your healing touch. I pray that touch would not only soothe my
sadness and my unrest, I also ask that your touch restore and renew the places
that are still tender. Help me to bless
the past and release it into your loving care.
And in the continued releasing, may space be created in my life to
follow where you will lead me. Amen.