3.22.2011

Falling Upward

Sometimes I lay awake at night, reminiscing on each of the steps that have been taken to arrive at this place. In my restlessness, my mind often reverts to unhealthy thought patterns. I spend hours playing the mental game: "If I could do it all over again..."

Each of the self-inflicted scars that I carry, have become a story. There is the visible scar on my chin from the time I got jumped and beat up by several guys after a hockey game, downtown Muskegon. [I probably shouldn't have run my mouth!]. And there is the cigarette lighter that got branded into my bicep the day my best friend left for the Air Force. We were just boys...

But then there is the internal scar tissue: The stories that are sacred and profane. There is the collapsed lung of raging indifference, and the irregular heart rhythms of repentance and rebellion. And there remains a post-traumatic stress that inevitably awakes me to soaked sheets of night sweats and the mystery of a confusing dream.

In his book "Falling Upward", Richard Rohr suggests that each of those crash landings in our lives have actually served to shape our future.

I am wiser now, but I've learned the hard way. What if all of those regrets could actually become a mosaic of art, in the hands of the Great Physician? What if He could pick up the pieces of the shattered heart and retell my story? What if my response to spiritual discipline could become the maturation of a disciple in the making?

I want to fall upward.

"Into Your arms I commit my Spirit".

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not 'could become'....

....'are becoming.'

I think I caught my breath at your last line.

Mama K said...

Sometimes, I want to click "like" and then I realize I'm not on facebook. I like what you say here. I have nothing profound to say, only that I like it. I'm glad you wrote it. I would click "like" if there were a like button.

Jamie said...

It is a beautiful mosaic.