becoming: as healing

“I’m trying mom, I am really trying.”

I said this as we held hands lamaze level tight, both did that kind of crying that chops up full words into broken pieces and turns shirt sleeves into kleenex. I was in the throws of my gut refusing food for a good amount of time and we were headed to a family function in the country where the fried fish was fresh and my favorite nostalgic dishes would be plenty. Hunger rises back up like the sun. Hard as I’ve tried, I have never outgrown its pangs or trained myself to mute the impulses and signals that propel a person in search of food. And still here I was, trying. I was trying with everything in me not to crave what I could not have. Some rare and celebratory days food nourishes and I get to keep it, most days it stages a rebellion and finds a way out. Many of us with gut issues have this complicated tangle of nausea and hunger, layered with such guilt for feeling we should be able to by discipline or by restraint or maybe by enough organic bone broth fix our uncooperative bodies. In this moment of a frustrated clash in the desire to both minimize the gut war raging inside and to revel in the connection, savoring, and joy that comes from enjoying a meal with family, Ronda McNeel entered into my hunger. My mom did not reprimand me for wanting so badly to eat, or attempt to pacify me by saying it would all be ok. In a beautiful act of solidarity, she willingly withheld from the feast available to her. We made eye contact during the day, seeing each other and into each other and each glance was a tender reminder that I was not alone on this no-food island.

About two weeks after my birth, mom recognized the barriers present would keep her from letting the overflow of her maternal body, full of intentional design and perfectly crafted nourishment, be given to feed her child. I could not eat, she could not nurse. Something in the body weakens when it cannot receive, and something in the soul shrivels when it cannot give. We have both grieved.

The solidarity of restraint from food mentioned in the story above was not isolated to one day, mom spontaneously and routinely fasts on my behalf. In restaurants, on road trips, in hospital rooms and on Wednesdays and beyond, I have witnessed her refusal of food as a desire to connect with what I am experiencing in my body. Her stepping into my hunger does not fill my stomach, but it eases my heart. There is sacrifice in it, she offers her empty belly alongside mine, and somehow I am fed.

To willingly participate in the suffering of another is one of the most Christ-becoming activities we are invited into. The incarnation of Jesus was power laid down, not strength taken or lost. Fullness becoming hunger. Privilege becoming vulnerability. Freedom becoming restrained. Holder of cosmos descended into an embryonic state with umbilical chord attached, wrapped up in an amniotic sac for about 40 weeks. He untouched by sin and brokenness picked it all up and shouldered it by choice, so that our crushed lungs could be gifted the capacity to take in a deep, cleansing, Spirit filled breath for the first time in our lives. Willingly withholding his rights, for the sake of becoming, for the purpose of connecting. The legacy of Jesus is that He descended and suffered both for relation and for restoration.

By choice, in a way that allowed Him to embody and relate to every single ache that we will or could encounter in our fragile human state, His giving over, letting go, and laying down created a safe solid place for us to meet Him. Starting from the most cellular level, He let mitosis and gestation split up and build up until each vertebrae and nerve pathway and hair follicle emerged. Conceptual artist and architect of The Milky Way galaxy and beyond made Himself small enough to be dropped through the water breaking, contracting labor of a vaginal birth.

Is that not the wildest thing you have ever heard? Maybe even describing it in those terms feels mighty uncomfortable. We like neat and tidy creeds with easy to check boxes, and here Christ came attached to a placenta. Immanuel, God with us. That is what we are saying we believe, or try to believe, or catch us some days and it seems so poetic yet impossible. My darling little brain has such a fractured grasp of all the implications and intricacies of a virgin birth, a triune but singular God, and other pillars of this faith tradition that I am in. It is far too much for these small hands to hold without dropping heaps of it along the way. I have reconciled to myself that I cannot hold it all, but I can be held by it instead. When I am not big enough to keep it or figure it out, it will keep me, because after learning the story of maker becoming made, where else could I possibly go? It is here in this understanding we first connect in a way that does not just change a religious status or punch some kind of membership card, but flings wide open the door to an entirely new way of being a person. I am not alone in my suffering. I am seen and understood, from feeble start to weary end, a universal longing fulfilled. For this reason, I cannot let go of the scarred hand of Christ.

So what do we do with this knowing? Just as my sweet momma often lays down the option to eat, and chooses to become hunger for me and with me, Christ experienced our frail humanity, but He did not stop there. Christianity says that God will eventually put back every disjointed place and illuminate all darkness, and until then He sits with us in the tender knowing only those who’ve worn skin can claim. If that is all I can ever say I know for sure, it would be enough. It is the most healing thing I could ever imagine. In His fasting he knows my hunger, and in His sacrifice He becomes my bread. This twofold example of how to meet others in pain is ordered and intentional. Becoming and givenness for the purpose of relation and restoration.

Becoming is the choice to relate to the pain of another, givenness is sacrificing to bring ease to that pain. This has given me a different view of the disciplines and practices we are called to engage in. These acts are not pieces of flair to show how fantastic we are or auditions to secure a spot in the afterlife. They are exercises that make our stiff, stubborn muscles capable of bending. In fasting we practice denying our cravings on purpose, intentionally feeling hunger. This helps us taste the ache of those who are empty and spilled out, reminding us of the shared way we all long to be filled. Silence and solitude is the choice to be alone, and perhaps even lonely. We do not have to enter into this place if we wish not to, we all could crank out a list of ways to stick a pacifier in our restless hearts. We can distract our way through any anxiety or discomfort, but to choose to be alone, particularly for the sake of cultivating an increased connection with those who are lonely, that is radical in a way that just might make the evening news. In generosity we practice giving over of what we think is ours. Sometimes this starts through clenched teeth and tight fists, but if we stick with it enough eventually we learn that we are not the source. We are guests at a table we did not set, with food we have not provided, invited to feast. This revelation transforms us from someone brazenly guarding the dinner door and asking to see tickets to a person pulling out chairs and asking if we can pour drinks. After all, how in the world were we even let in here to begin with?

When I feel the urge to be inflexible, when I find myself quick to say what someone should have or could have or if that was me I would already, I will go back to this place. He met me at my least common denominator. He orchestrated a way to understand me, getting hands and feet dirty in the process. His bend towards me spanned light years, my lowering only covers inches, feet at most. I need to remember that on my haughty days. Lower child, remember He went down there. Go find Spirit of God hanging out with the poor in spirit, and be blessed.