leaning. learning. letting go.

I am feeling awake and alive these days; it is a return I've anticipated. I can taste, feel, smell, and enjoy again. I can appreciate beauty and move freely. I actually ran up the stairs today, skipping steps to retrieve my laundry. It was glorious!!

While I have no desire to go back to a place where I feel empty and drained and sluggish and heavy, I don't want to lose my grip on the truth of how truly bereft, how terribly empty I am without Christ to fill me. Things that I thought came from myself like the ability to extend basic kindnesses or to practice selflessness really don't originate anywhere within me. They start with Him.

It was never more clear than when I had nothing in myself to call upon: it starts with Him. I'm not sure how to say it in a way that doesn't sound trite or pithy. But after starting each day at the end of myself, I got a crash course on leaning into Him moment by moment.

I am already seeing the ways in which I am defaulting to old habits and ways of being. I find that when I can lean upon myself, I do. When I insist on being strong, it invariably limits the ways in which the power of God can be made perfect in my weakness. Leaning into Him more fully is a lesson I am learning and one I suspect that I will continue to learn and re-learn over the course of my life.

If anything, I'm perceiving with greater clarity how concurrently painful and beautiful it is to let go, and how ready He is to fill us when we finally do.

photo © 2008 jen fox photography

breathing into it

Last weekend my friend Elyse drove up for a visit. On Saturday we worked out at the gym, went to coffee, and went to church. On Sunday, we were very intentional about observing the injunction to rest on the Sabbath: we got 90-minute Swedish massages at my favorite local spa.

And yes, it was as every bit as blissful as it sounds.

After allowing our pores to drink in the gauzy warmth of the eucalyptus steam room, we went out to the waiting area where our massage therapists would meet us. Wrapped in thick and heavy white spa robes, we each sat in the waiting area with windows overlooking the cold and quiet bay, fingers wrapped tightly around our steaming mugs of herbal tea, a fire crackling at our backs.

My massage began with me face down on the heated table in a barely lit room, my arms relaxed and resting on the table against my body. A pan flute’s hollow notes were playing softly through speakers I could not see. It wasn’t long before I felt myself melt into the table.

The therapist began working at my legs and feet, rotating my ankles and using her hands to encourage looseness in my tight calves. She rubbed out each toe, pulling gently on each one. My stiff neck gave way under her persistent manipulations and finally consented to unclenching. Arms and hands received special attention as she rotated each of my arms from the shoulder and my hands from the wrists. I felt myself teeter on the edge of oblivion when my scalp and face were the focus of her attention.

Every cell in my body tingled with delight. I pulled in breaths through my nostrils that reached down to the ends of my toes and finger tips. I was limp like a well-cooked noodle, feeling heady and light, suspended and floating in thick fluid.

I first started receiving massages as part of my therapy following a car accident in 1996. My soft tissue injuries were extensive enough that multiple doctors told me I would have had an easier recovery had I broken my back. Those sessions with Julie were helpful, but hardly enjoyable in the way most people think massages should be. My muscles were constantly clenched and pulsating, throbbing, clinging to pockets of lactic acid. This went on for several months.

Julie went away to Chicago for a few weeks to get married, but referred me to another LMP to provide my treatment in her absence. As I lay on the table on my back eyes wide open and staring intently at the ceiling, the new therapist observed, “Yeah, Julie said you had a hard time letting go.”

It was the first time I had heard that. It was the first time I began to understand that I was hanging onto my injury every bit as much as it was hanging onto me. I would stare at that ceiling above me and disconnect; I would count its dots, study its texture, get lost in a deep white sea of blankness. I would do anything but focus on my clenching muscles, those pained and injured soft tissues. This new therapist encouraged me to close my eyes, to breathe deeply, to feel everything in my body, and to let it go.

It was in yoga that I first learned about how to bring the mind and the body together. This, my instructor often repeated, was primarily about focusing on your breath: being deliberate about drawing each breath in, pulling it down to your heels and up through your scalp; drawing the breath in deeply so every cell is infused with its life. It was about letting it go slowly, being intentional in its release, pushing out waste from every cell.

I always think of this when I get a massage: about the injunction to breathe deeply, to be intentional and aware, mindfully engaged. I can choose to stare at the ceiling and make an expert study of its texture, or I can surrender to the touch of the professional: let her rub out the knots and coax the sore spots to release. I can feel those points that wince when touched, trusting that the future benefits of letting go and breathing into those places exceed the present pain as she pokes, pushes, pulls. I can resist the movement she imposes on my arms, legs, and joints, or I can surrender: allow her to be the one dictating the motion of my limbs. I can clench, hang on, resist. This is what comes naturally. Or I can release and surrender, participate in the work she is doing: feel each manipulation and invite it in with each inhale. Giving over this control is not natural to me and requires consistent and conscious effort.

I am thinking of this these often days as memory reaches into my present, as God simultaneously puts his finger on sore and tender places, pressing and digging deeply with His fingers. I wince at His touch and my first inclination is to resist, to stare at the ceiling and disconnect, to bide my time until it is over. To be intentional only in forgetting. But I am especially mindful now that I must feel where He presses, trusting the work He does is good, knowing that He is working on rubbing out those toxic and tender things to which I unconsciously cling.

So I am doing my best to breathe into it, taking capacious and deliberate gulps of clear air and holding them in. And then slowly, slowly, I let them go, feeling each sinew and fiber relax its grip a little more with each cycle of breath. He continues to press and rub and pull, coaxing release from tissues accustomed to holding tight. He is doing most of the work, but it is I who am sore and light-headed and tired. I might stay here for awhile yet, resting and breathing and surrendering until I no longer feel that I might topple should I rise and walk.

gratitude, refreshed

At last, I am emerging from the flu that has had a hold on me since Saturday. It is easier to get up and move, to stand in the shower, to make my way up the stairs. I am remembering what my home looks like from vantage points other than my couch. Today I am wearing something other than pajamas (which by all accounts have seen better days after being worn for 72 hours straight); today I washed my hair, put on mascara, made my bed. My movements are slow and deliberate, and I am grateful for the simple movement.

In a way, I am actually thankful I got sick; I am amazed at how resilient my body is and how much it has put up with over the last six months (over the past two years really, if all the gastrointestinal drama is factored in). I was overdue for a concentrated period of rest.

Though this illness spanned a mere two or three days, it felt like an eternity. My head throbbed and pounded, felt like it was going to split open like a ripe melon. Every bone in my body ached. My sinuses were staging their own protest and more than once, I was fairly certain my lungs were making an attempt to jump ship. My appetite for food had all but disappeared; every attempt to get up from the couch required that I concentrate on suppressing the overwhelming waves of nausea.

Today, I woke to a world where I could breathe through both nostrils and stand upright without visceral protest. My lungs have calmed down and it no longer feels as though someone is taking hammer and awl to my head. I just managed to enjoy a cup of steaming split pea soup. I folded laundry today and put it away, I caught up on some long-overdue ironing. Quite rightly, the sun is shining out my window. Does it get more glorious than this?

Some might express a difference of opinion, but few things give me as stark an appreciation for wellness as illness does. When accustomed to good health, it becomes easy to take it for granted, to forget what extraordinary gift is is to move, to breathe, to consume a meal. Likewise, few things make me fall to my knees with gratitude like remembering I have been set free of my chains and now reside safely in the shadow of His wing.

My chains are gone

I've been set free

My God, my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood His mercy reigns

Unending love, amazing grace

~Chris Tomlin, Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)

Language will always fall short where expressions of gratitude toward God are concerned; knowing that, this is my small way of remembering and saying thank you.