love

Stronger Together

/ Tarrah Vaupel / Leave a comment

Does this photo resonate with anyone? It does for me. This photo accompanied one of my social media posts from FIVE years ago…and it conveniently popped up today as a “memory”.

I wish I could say that it was “just” a memory…and that I never have feelings like this anymore…but that wouldn’t be true at…all… The truth is, we have all been conditioned by society and our culture to ‘push through’ and ‘push it down’…but what happens when we do that? What is the price that we pay at the end of the day for doing this with no regard or space for actually listening to and honoring ourselves? It’s costly… It’s exhausting… It’s abusive… It’s toxic… …and you will burnout…

There are times in all of our lives when we are faced with times that we simply must move forward and press on with every last ounce of strength that we have. That’s life. Happens to everyone and NO ONE is immune to times such as these. Even the person or people in your lives who seemingly “have it all together” or seem to draw from a limitless amount of energy and enthusiasm…them too.

I have learned, and am still learning, that sometimes we just need to surrender to that exhaustion. If only for a moment or two…allow yourself a moment to speak to yourself with words of compassion and love. Feel your ‘feels’, sense what your body is telling you…sit your butt still and just be. It is within those moments where God breaks in and feels with you…with all of us. IF we allow space for that to happen, of course. To be sure, God is with us through each moment of our lives. BUT when we surrender ourselves to the reality of our bodies and take a moment to “just be” in a moment of contemplation or meditation…be it sitting in our cars, in a specially created space of solitude for reflection OR locking ourselves in the bathroom for 5 minutes to “get away from it all” #thestruggleisreal. Those are the moments that we can hear and feel the tangible love, grace and strength of God alongside us. Staring back at us, and sometimes, through our own eyes in the mirror.

Our exhaustion, our brokenness, our imperfections, our cracks are places where the light enters…and those spaces make me, for example, stronger with being aware and fully present in knowing that God is with me through it and in the mess ’til the end. This “hotmess” (as I sometimes refer to myself) is stronger with God and most assuredly stronger together with all of you. Remember that YOU, dear reader, are a part of that “togetherness”…and I thank God for that.

Hello darkness…my old friend…

/ Tarrah Vaupel / Leave a comment

“Headed I fear, for a most dreadful place. The Waiting Place.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come,
or a plane to go or the mail to come,
or the rain to go or the phone to ring,
or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting.” ~ ‘Oh the Places You’ll Go’ Excerpt by Dr. Seuss

Welp…here I am again. In a most dreadful place…the waiting place. This time its different though and I have a whole week or more to flesh that out. This I have discerned so far: I intentionally find myself (ever so slowly) raising my head, straightening my shoulders and walking head-on into the place that I have cowered in, trembled through or hidden within so many times before. Why this difference I sense this time? I am held in a new and different way by the village that surrounds and upholds me. I was reminded by beloved friends to “Remember”… Remember that I have been here in this Godforsaken waiting place before, affirmed my feelings and held space for me. Remember that I am held, I am loved and I am not alone through this valley. God is with me…enfolding me in a loving embrace and inviting me to trust that “all shall be well” and that God is gonna walk with me through this time in the valley and never leave my side for a single breath. Remember that I cannot and am not doing this alone…leaning hard into my faith to strengthen me and reflecting upon the journey of things I have already overcome. It’s incredibly humbling to look back over my journey in and out of the wilderness and through the vastness of my valleys and mountaintop moments. It’s humbling, and yet, so empowering all at the same time.

The words from my Lenten devotional by Rachel A. Keefe continue to be timely and offer words that land on my heart:

“Death retreats into the shadows

as I emerge out of the ruins

You spoke a word and life was restored

to a beloved daughter

and an outcast woman

I am somewhere in between

and in need of a Word

find me here

my hands are open.”

The words that I sing from my soul during worship:

“Meet me in my wandering…deep within my soul.”

I wonder not that you will find me because I am already found. I wonder not that you will meet me because you are already with me…pursuing me with a reckless love and steadfast promise to always uphold me with a mighty hand and grace overflowing.

I wonder who else finds themselves in this place today? I wonder if these words will reach them and bring comfort…

Bending and Breaking…

/ Tarrah Vaupel / 2 Comments

My Lenten devotional this day brought me to a scripture from Luke where Jesus heals the woman who had been “crippled for 18 years by a spirit.” My ableist alarm immediately began tripping and I read the scripture and then the commentary that followed. The story goes, that Jesus spotted this woman in the crowd and then called her to him…he makes a proclamation that she is “healed from her ailment” and then she stand upright and praises God. As the priests always do when Jesus heals, they become infuriated and chastise him for working on the sabbath day. This leads to Jesus calling the priests out for their hypocrisy and the crowd rejoices at the great work that Jesus has done.

What do we know of this woman? This human creature that was standing in the crowd that day. The gospel writer creates her narrative for us…but I wonder and find myself wanting to know more about her.

I imagine a woman during those biblical times. IF I give any creedance at all to the narrative that the gospel writer painted, then I discern that she was an unwed woman. The writer says that a “spirit” had caused her to not be able to stand straight. Interesting thought here…could that “spirit” simply be the heaviness of the weight she was carrying by being unwed in a time where women were only worth something because they were married to a man? Could that heaviness be that she had lost her husband eighteen years ago, he had no family or brothers to care for her (as was the custom) so she was forced to fend for herself in the wilderness to survive? Could that heaviness had been that she was unable to bear children (yet another value attribution in that time for women) and he husband divorced her? Perhaps she was born with the inability to stand straight…which meant (once again in “those” times) that her or her family had done something that God was punishing her for…excuse me while I vomit at the atrocity of this way of thinking. I don’t have answers to any of these wonderings…but I think that this woman is worth more than what the gospel writer used her for. We shouldn’t overlook her and only see the mystery of this healing that Jesus thrust upon her. She was used as an illustration of Jesus’ power to work miracles….inspiration porn, if you will. All too often in our own society we bear witness to similar stories of people overcoming things thought to be impossible…and in the midst of all of that, we lose sight of the person’s humanity. This woman deserves more than that couple of sentences written about her in the bible…she doesn’t even have a name. I imagine a name for her…a name for her that I believe fits into the way that Jesus saw her and interacted with her…a Hebrew name for ‘precious’: Yakira.

Indeed, Yakira was a precious child of God. I imagine her story to be one of isolation and one where she wasn’t shown any kindness or love from others. The weight of life weighed her down…causing her to bend a bit more with each passing day. Yakira would bend, but she would not break under the weight of the harshness of her life story. She wanders into the synagogue, or perhaps just peers inside from the doorway at the commotion that Jesus has brought around him at his teaching and presence. And Jesus sees her. He calls out to her and call her by her name, “Yakira, come to me.” She nervously make her way to him as the crowd parts to make her path clear to Jesus. Jesus does something here that no one has likely done…in eighteen years of more of her earthly life…Jesus touches her. He touches her with love, kindness and compassion. Human and Divine…placing hands upon her and loving her as no other she had ever experienced. Jesus touching her was, in my interpretation, more important than any words of “victory over her” that were proclaimed. Yakira’s own spirit, to be sure, sought love, kindness and connection. To be seen, to be valued, to be held as the precious child of God that she indeed was. Her spirit is lifted, her weight she no longer carries because of the love he has shown her…and she raises her head and body which is now free from its weight. Yakira rises and praises God.

Jesus broke tradition here…and we too are called to break tradition in seeking justice for others and, to be sure, for ourselves. We face many things in life that weigh us down and wear on our souls. Bending…breaking…pushing us down. Life tears at us and leaves us dangling, threadbare…clinging to whatever bit of hope we can grasp at in our times of wilderness and darkness. It is, however, within those times that we are better able to hear that still small voice of God…it can come as a whisper from some place deep within us…or perhaps, from a kind word or crinkled eyes peeking over a masked face. When someone SEES us…calls to us and speaks a life-giving word to us. THAT is a miracle we are all capable of and THAT is something that we should all embody towards others as beloved children of God. I wonder how much more life-giving this biblical narrative could be had this woman been given more humanity? I wonder often about those left unnamed and used to make a point. These wonderings are important and can bring much more commonality between our lives in this time next to those lives that walked upon this earth more than 2000 years ago. Will you wonder with me? What do you wonder about this beloved woman, Yakira?