sharing our wounds

(this hospice visit occurred several weeks ago, but it's taken me some time to reflect on all that it held)

"Shattering erases our boundaries, removes our limitations, and makes us ready for the greatest glory of all."

-Pg. 10, Tessa Bielecki, "Teresa of Avila: Ecstasy and Common Sense"

I am sitting on a small wooden stool, by a hospice patient's bed. Oyuna, one of the hospice nurses, sits next to me, pulling medical tools out of her bag and sterilizing them as Dr. Bolera speaks with the patient and her caregiver.

Being present for hospice visits has led me to recognizing, remembering, recalling, relearning that each of these men and women are my brothers and sisters.

In sitting with them I have found the boundaries between myself and others being shattered, God revealing to me our connections, our sharing, our reality as his children.

I am trying to listen to the exchange in Mongolian, piecing together a few words here and there, as Oyuna has the patient roll over so she can change the bandage on what I assume will be a bedsore.

It is a very large, gaping tumor on her lower back- a crevass where there should be skin.

As she peels back the bandage, revealing the tumor, I find myself facing the urge to look away. I want to turn away, to shield my eyes, to not look at the physical manifestations of cancer and illness and pain and struggle.

Shattering.

I pray instead.

prayers that I would be present, attentive, that I would not shield myself from her, but be with her.

As I watch Oyuna clean the wound, I am reminded of how my reaction to this sister's physical wound is often exactly how I react to others' non-physical wounds as well.

I think of how all of us tend to face wounds of any kind (physical, emotional, etc) with the desire to turn away, to not see them, to not face that pain in another, to not be reminded of the pain, suffering and struggle that exist among us.

I watch Oyuna move her hands with care, struck by how deeply healing it is when others are present to our wounds with love and grace.

How suddenly that grace, that love, that compassion frees us from shame- frees us to be honest about our wounds' existence and to seek healing.

Shattering.

What does it meant to be present to my own wounds?

To the wounds of others?

What does it look like to embrace them with love and grace instead of hesitance and fear?

And I was reminded that most often what keeps me from showing that love and grace is my own unwillingness to be reminded of my own wounds.

For in facing the wounds of others, we must face those things that allow us to feel with our brothers and sisters. Empathy requires our own pain to be realized, acknowledged, seen, heard, known.

Shattering.

Healing is a process that requires one another- to give voice, to give witness, to share in carrying the burden until we can let it go, until we can set it at Christ's feet; fully, wholly, completely surrendered.

Sitting by this sister's bed, I thought about how seeing others' pain and struggle (of which there is much here, in the U.S. and elsewhere) requires me to face my own.

That Christ came to share in our struggle with us, to feel pain- that we might know the reality of solidarity embodied, broken and redeemed.

He felt so that we might feel.

And then he reached out his hand and asked us to seek healing, to share with one another in turning our hearts to him.

And then he said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." (Luke 5:31)

Shattering erases our boundaries.