Baggage

It is so easy to get lost in the darkness, to experience our bodies as though we are breathing thick black oil instead of fresh clean air, to disengage ourselves from community and crawl into our wounds, forget that the night is nearly over.

When people ask how I came to be here in this place, my story begins with a decade long absence from community — a drought violently begun in 1997 when I broke away from Catholicism, a long dry season that ended ten years later in the open arms of a holy catholic apostolic church, a multi-denominational community, a place where for weeks I did not introduce myself, was known only as the woman who cries.

Yesterday, after a 40 day absence, I returned home. As my heart steps out of the darkness, the tears flow freely.

Breathing the thick black oil of darkness began nearly a year ago, triggered unintentionally by a person who mistook compassion for friendship, a person who cannot hear my pain, a person cruelly misled as plastic me expanded to mask the inadequacy inherent in my humanity.

I allowed the oily plastic mask to distance me from God and disconnect me from true friends, the people who love deeply enough to accept me baggage and all.

The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. 

So let us put aside the deeds of darkness...  

—Romans 13:12 NIV more

I am again the woman who cries.

Rw

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David Hayward, Naked Pastor baggage