The year following my college graduation I worked at a shelter that offered meals and transitional housing for men, women, and children experiencing homelessness. After spending four years working towards a science degree, I saw this role as one that could fill the in-between-time; an opportunity viewed as altruistic in nature; a placeholder while I figured out my next move. With the goal to hurry life forward, I was disconnected from God and myself with a deep existential loneliness buried within. I brought my private chaos, my mess, my brokenness to the homeless shelter every day masked behind a facade of movement; a movement that served as a diversion from inner misery.
Prior to this new work at the homeless shelter, my order for life crumbled. It was in the still and silent moments of putting a two-year-old to bed at the shelter each day that I learned: when order crumbles, mystery rises. I was invited into mystery through relationships with wandering souls of mothers and children at the homeless shelter. They invited me to understand that humanity is about identifying with somebody else’s pain, with being there and hurting for and with others. These mothers and children also illuminated my own spiritual homelessness. My “homelessness” was characterized by narrow roles and expectations that prevented the deepest and truest parts of myself to be revealed.
My time at the homeless shelter taught me that there is an outward, false sense of security that comes with meeting expectations placed upon oneself by self, society, and others…but it comes at an inward cost. In my early twenties, claiming my truest self meant choosing a career in ministry rather than science. This opened a world of vibrant color and beauty as I felt a new closeness to God that was simultaneous with developing self-knowledge.
Now in my late twenties, I look back to this period of life—a period that I once considered the “in-between-time” —and see it as an experience that was necessary to live more expansively and authentically. I can apply this lived wisdom to familiar feelings bubbling up within; recurring feelings of spiritual homelessness that derive from an avoidance of feelings and deep self-disclosure. I am continually reminded that life is a journey in which we are called to connect with wandering souls, to embrace disorder, tumult, and even pain, and enter Mystery to reveal and understand our truest selves.
There is a powerful image in the Bible where God speaks to Job, a wealthy, blameless, and uptight man. Job cries out to God after losing everything and when it seems as though all his hope has vanished, God comes to him in the power and strength of a whirlwind (Job 38-39). God literally reaches out to Job from the chaos and mess of a vortex. When I consider the chaotic places in life that separate me from my truest self, I ask…
How often does life feel like a chaotic whirlwind?
When it feels like such, do I listen for God within the tumult?
Do I trust that God will transform my chaos?
Do I step into the mess with assurance that there will be a startling encounter with the
soul?
I (we) must step into the mess with confidence that we are God’s Beloved. Personally, it is in doing so that I am reminded of the lesson from the two-year-old girl experiencing homelessness: when order crumbles, mystery rises. It is through Mystery that our truest and deepest sense of self is revealed.
Written By Our Revealer: Liz Palmer
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