“…so here’s the thing: Every single person around you, everyone you meet, everyone you cross paths with today, every single one is fighting their own hard fires 🔥 — so what if we all decided to just be real gentle with one another today?
What if we could say it together, like one Body, say it all together to each other because there is not even one of us who hasn’t lost something, who doesn’t fear something, who doesn’t ache with something. So what if we turn to the hurting, turn to each other, and promise it till we’re hoarse:
“We won’t give you some cliche — but something to cling to — and that will mean our hands.
We won’t give you some platitudes — but some place for your pain — and that will mean our time.
We won’t give you some excuses — but we’ll be some example — and that will mean bending down and washing your wounds. Wounds that we don’t understand, wounds that keep festering, that don’t heal, that down right stink — wounds that can never make us turn away.
Because we are the Body of the Wounded Healer and we are the people who believe the impossible — that wounds can be openings to the beauty in us.”
Let’s be the brave and speak up, speak the Truth and Love:
Shame is a bully and Grace is a shield.
You are safe here.
Write it on walls and on arms and right across wounds:
“No Shame.
No Fear.
No Hiding.
Always safe for the suffering here.
You can be different and you can struggle and you can wrestle and you can hurt and we will be here. Because a fallen world keeps falling apart and even though we the Body can’t make things turn out — we can turn up. Just keep turning up, showing up, looking up.”
If we only knew what fire every person is facing — there isn’t one person we wouldn’t help fight their fire with the heat of a greater love.
#TheBrokenWay #ShameIsABully #GraceIsAShield #KeepShowingUp”
Ann Voskamp
