thanksgiving

I wrote the entry below in the airport last year as I flew home for Thanksgiving. I never posted it. In many ways it still seems appropriate…

November 2007
At our school we talk extensively about the impact of the incarnation on the therapeutic relationship. How does the reality that Christ became flesh impact who we are as Christians, and at Mars Hill, as students studying counseling? We are the body of Christ. So, what does that mean for who I am?

I’ve been wrestling with this question all semester. I’ve never been challenged to learn to flesh out this idea more than I’ve been challenged this semester. I’ve considered new questions, old questions in new ways, and begun to live in a way that reflects my belief that as the body of Christ we are to be about seeking healing and redemption. However, all of these ideas can be just ideas. Nothing becomes more real than when you actually have an experience that suddenly makes everything you’ve been learning become real and very much alive.

I was writing a difficult paper last week, probably one of the most personal, and for me, most difficult papers I’ve written. I expected to experience grief and anger, and I did, but something more happened. God brought tastes of redemption through the paper as well. As I was writing about some of my struggles, I found myself surrounded by several dear friends who invited me to step into those struggles—to believe that the very healing and redemption I long for could be possible. They invited me to hope. And in the most timid and yet monumental way, I hoped, and oh was it sweet.

I have struggled to hope and struggled to believe that healing and redemption are really possible. I’m not sure these particular friends had any idea of the significance of what was happening in me. God was working and moving.

As I drove home from a friend’s house in tears, the words of Regina Spektor’s Real Love song were echoing over and over as the song played in my car. “It’s real love. Yes, it’s real love. It’s real love. Yes, it’s real love…”

On this Thanksgiving, I am giving thanks for the people around me who are the body of Christ to me—those dear people who know real love in ways that I am only beginning to imagine.