feeling like glass.

Interesting week this week. Life is not nearly as black and white as I want it to be, and usually is a whole lot more confusing and complicated and scary.

I had several clients this week wrestling with some extremely painful things. Abuse they held inside for years and didn't disclose. Abandonment issues and fears that for 10 or even 15 years they tried to push through, not knowing how to forgive the other or forgive themselves. Some of these clients this week decided that they can't make their marriages work, despite feeling very convicted against divorce. Some continue to wrestle with how to have courage and strength when they want to self harm. Some are watching their dreams slip through their hands and fade away, completely outside of their control, not knowing who they are in the aftermath.

I realize at times that I can be very matter-of-factual. My heart doesn't go to the painful and broken place with them where there are no easy answers and pain is an endurable reality. Its so scary to do that, to own that I can't save them or fix their situation, I can't even save myself or fix my own situations. I want to get into problem-solving mode with them and teach them skills, when sometimes it's just... not the time for that. Its time to break with them and let that be. To own that life is fragile and so easily shatters at times. I want to fix it, I want to know where to go with it but sometimes I just don't.

There's a Blindside song that asks "Don't you ever feel like glass?" It hints to this strange situation we are in where at any moment, like a glass ornament on a tree, we could be mishandled and fall and shatter. We are delicate and fragile and frail. Yet there is freedom in understanding and embracing that, instead of putting on this protective wall that's meant to keep us from being vulnerable. We are like glass, but sometimes we don't feel like it because we're fooling ourselves- convincing ourselves that we are safe and secure in this world and free to do or be whoever we want without actually being vulnerable to breaking.

Can this go to a positive place? Can we look towards and anticipate redemption in the midst of this kind of sorrow? My life mantras reflect my expectation of God's redemption, but sometimes I fear that it will not come- not in my life or in the lives of my hurting clients. That tells me I need to understand the cross and grace and mercy and love in ways that I do not yet grasp. I think I'm too afraid to, too afraid that I'll reach out to hold onto mercy and love and plummet to my death because God's hand wasn't there waiting to meet mine... or to catch me.