When You Burst Wide Open
There are these thin places in my soul. Like over-stretched plastic wrap, the slightest bit of pressure will cause it to tear and break open.
And somehow, in the tearing and breaking, I will spill out. Not the best version - showered, organized, best face on Wendy. No, the raw, unfulfilled, trying to see God, lost in this everdayness Wendy.
I guard the thin places...not exposing them to people and places that will rub up against them.
Avoiding the tearing, breaking, and spilling. That’s not pretty.
I wrap my arms around a mama weary from scratching out a hard life and being the sole caregiver to her sweet baby boy. She bows low to receive our prayers and offers us everything out of her little. She kisses my cheek and says, “I love you.” (The only English words she knows.) And right there in the muddy lane in a slum in Ethiopia, I burst wide open.
I can’t explain to her the loneliness of my first-world life. Lost in a sea of possessions, I can become a slave to image and checklists. My "friends" are counted in likes and followers. Our children caught in a war between culture and God. I live an organized, pretty, unfulfilling life.
As we cry and pray together, I beg God for love and community, as much for me as for her. She might never know how God walked me through a season of loneliness, a season of softening, so her tear-drenched testimony would fall on a tender, kindred heart.
In that moment of burst-wide-open glory, I am tempted to stop and push it all back down, hide the tender, goofy, real me. Instead, I jump up and down in mud puddles, waving and blowing kisses, shouting Ciao to the whole neighborhood.
I live the whole week burst wide open. Crying when the tears come. Laughing loudly as the throngs of children greet and play with us. Praying boldly. Hugging strangers as long-lost family. Asking deep questions and lingering in silence and heartfelt answers.
And in this burst wide open living, I find something. Or maybe someone. The best version of me. The woman who doesn’t worry about make-up or image. The me who wants God and can’t breathe for finding Him on trash-riddled streets and in runny-nosed little boys wearing only one flip-flop. The me who wants to live a life marked by my favorite word in the Bible...hesed. The me who loves recklessly, prays boldly, feels deeply, praises loudly, and embraces joy.
Suddenly I was Jairus's daughter. You know, the story (in Mark 5) of the synagogue official whose daughter dies. When Jesus arrives at the house He tells the mourners she is not dead, but sleeping.
Taking the child by the hand, He said to her, “Talitha kum!”
(which translated means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”).
Mark 5:41
Standing on a road 7,000 miles from home, Jesus took me by the heart and said, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" I felt alive, really, alive. (Maybe for the first time ever, really.)
Those thin places aren't weak places. As glory bearers in earthen vessels, those thin places are the places love and light shine through. We are meant to live burst wide open. In our raw, God-seeking realness, glory shines the brightest. His work in us is evident. His love is not boxed and managed but impetuous and genuine.
Living burst wide open isn't pretty; it's raw, vulnerable, and sloppy. The challenge is actually to live it. Throwing your arms around people means you have to throw your arms around real people - people are messy, hurtful, and offensive. (But so are you...so am I.) Living is feeling and carrying burdens.
Living is rejoicing with those who rejoice and crying with those who mourn. Living is deep talks over coffee, lugging moving boxes, holding hands, paper gowns and hospital beds, bouncing crying babies, delivering meals, scrubbing someone else's toilet, praying, sacrificing your comfort for someone else's needs, standing in a mud puddle in Africa thinking of all the lonely women I know at home who I've never yelled I love you to.
Living burst wide open is being open to glory. Knowing that being open to glory means being open to discomfort and pain. But being open to glory means you're open to glory....and that's really living.
