Moving Back Inside My Bones

I recently decided to move back inside my bones.I drew a line in the sand more rounded than straight. The line quickly became a tight circle hemming in my heels and tightly tucking in my toes. I wobbled and was momentarily disoriented. I took a deep breath and found myself smiling.

Then, I grabbed a sticky note from my kitchen catch-all drawer and wrote myself a permission slip.

---

To: Jamie

From: Jamie

Permission: To be guilt-free and blissfully limited. To have joyful acceptance of my capacity.

---

I included the time and date to make it feel official.

Overwhelmed by the world and a hamster wheel marathon of trying to do everything all of the time for everyone, I snapped and reached for this new approach because lately the theme of life seems to be all bets are off and life is not what we planned or hoped. Historically, I have not liked being reminded of my limits. At least that is what my mom says. But history is what we make it, so I decided to try another approach and follow my own advice. "Take it easy on yourself," I tell my students, so I drew a circle and wrote a note and now I am trying to figure out what that means to my feelings and knowings.

I am learning to accept the pure joy of owning my capacity. To live that out I decide hourly to let others choose if they wanted to find me in my own bones or move on to someone else somewhere else doing something else. I settled in my heart there were other people doing more than I was able to do and crafting a life more interesting than mine. I left the choice of sharing space with me to others. I finalyzed it all by shutting the door to my heart but left a welcome mat because I do live in the south.

I quickly realized to keep inside my bones I had to choose every day to empty my boxes and not spend time scrolling through vacation rental websites. I have enough to do in here, this uncomfortable place I was made to live in. Living in my bones demands I face a new harsh reality. I am born to die. I am dying to live, and this is yet another tension of my faith calling me back to something more something other something deeper inside my bones.

Before all things, God knew me. Then, within time and inside a womb, He formed me. The limitless God created limited me. We are all meager humans existing to know Him and experience being known by Him.

But here's the secret that feels like a trick, He both knew and knows us, and while I am completely known to Him He is completely unknown to me. This would be a terrible place to end, so God doesn't. He makes the next move and sets up a relationship with us based on His limitless grace and love for us to experience. This grace and love provides meaning and measure to our existence completely independent of anything we do.

This sweet wonder of grace amazes me and invites me to rethink what it means to live my faith and have a fulfilling life.

I am not moving deeper in to explore the secrets of my interesting heart or zen my way out of pain or think myself into a better self-esteem.

I am moving deeper in to take God at His word that knowing Him and being in relationship with Him is the great adventure of my life.

My borders don't have to increase to live life to the fullest. My leadership style and management techniques do not need more opportunity to flex and flash. I can courageously pray for less and settle into a great contentment that demands my whole self, more faith than I have ever had, and greater courage than I presently own. Here is the crazy part, I can do all of this without leaving my couch.

I am built to break and breathe. Sleep. Cry. Forget. Accepting this is my deliverance not my cross. Moving in is actually moving out.

My past tendency to move inward and follow the lead of my two dear friends, Sadness and Darkness, make this move all the more problematic. Painful. Triggering. I don't know if I can trust myself to walk a healthy trail of abdication instead of assertion. Last time I went in, things didn't go well.

Desperate to maintain control, I reached way beyond my grasp and tried to assert myself in work and forgot how to play. I was backwards, disordered. I made tertiary things and people vital and struggled to use theory and activism to matter. I worked tirelessly to orchestrate the universe to revolve around me and my ideas. I lost my way and my hope with it.

When I look to Scripture, I find a massive exodus from the relative and external. I find God filling the faithless with courage by reminding them He is the center of all living things (God always existed and made everything) and the history of all living things (God tells His people "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."). God's invitation is for me to see and experience His existence as the primary reality of my life, past and present, internal and external. There is a greater good and redemptive plan making its way into the world and inviting us to go further up and further in as Jewel the Unicorn says in The Last Battle (in the Chronicles of Narnia series).

"I have come home at last! This is my country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all of my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up and further in!"

Yes, I just quoted a unicorn. Not sorry.

While this utterance comes when Jewel sees heaven, for me, hope is closely tied to the eternal and heavenly, the almost but certain future. This fuels my current desire to find that which is more real and more true by looking inside and beyond.

God is the content of my life. Not humanity and not me. He is the center and source of existence, He is the marrow of my bones.

Bone marrow is soft and spongy tissue living inside some of our large bones. Our bodies use healthy bone marrow to produce stem cells that in turn generate the building block blood cells of our immune system. Bone marrow gives my body the capacity to fight infection and protect my wellbeing. So, I have been asking God to become the marrow of my bones to keep me safe from sadness and darkness and provide the building material for an orderly and peaceful inner life full of hope and rich in dreams. I have been asking to God to breath life, breath Himself, into my bones so that I might be kept and sustained by and for Him alone.

As I go about my days I find, little by little, God is satisfying my coming and going with a meaningful eternal story of order, history, and hope. A hope in the One who came and did not break but yielded his bones and morrow so I might accept my limits and live free of the cost of pursuing my own ends. I now see Scripture as an account of how His bones were and are strong enough to hold the whole world, its evils and glories. Each moment is a confirmation and a complication. A step towards death and life.

So He holds all things while setting me free of the responsibility I placed on myself years ago. The responsibility of making everything work for everybody. I am still writing emails, making grocery lists, and having heated discussions with my spouse. However, I am learning how to do it all from within and enjoy the process of decreasing daily in my own personally designed blessed adventure of contentment.

Initially, I thought this move represented my defeat into darkness and sadness. Now, I realize I am actually answering a deep call within to accept God lovingly forming me, graciously hemming me in, mercifully breathing life into me, and endlessly making and re-making me because He's got the whole world, dirt and universe simultaneously, in His hands. Amazingly, this includes and excludes me in a way too wonderful for me to comprehend.