Big shoulders, big hands, strong arms
I sat in my car and cried yesterday.
I had just come from the chiropractor where my doctor worked for some time trying to release the muscles in the back of my head and upper neck; they wouldn't budge. And they hurt - badly. Though they are normally somewhat stubborn, they usually concede and begin to relax in response to therapy. But yesterday they were intractable, refusing to cooperate even with the seasoned skills of my doctor. Normally I'm not shocked by tight muscles or painful knots as they have been part of my story for the past 12 years. But yesterday the condition of my body stopped me cold. It was as if my body had circled the wagons, closing in on itself, refusing to be helped, refusing comfort, curling into its own suffering.
As I sat in my car and wept I realized why:
Afghanistan.
Haiti.
Political standoffs at home and abroad.
No wonder my body was in retreat. These recent events, coupled with other stresses of life, had rendered my body and mind incapable of holding any more. The pain was the overflow.
In his book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma Dr. Bessel van der Kolk examines how trauma (big T and little t) manifests in the body, how it wires the brain and shapes our behavior. Van der Kolk explains the importance of paying attention not only to our emotions (fear, anger, joy, etc), but how those emotions are manifesting in the body through sensations such as "pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hollow, and so on. . . their breath, their gestures, such as tightness in their chests or gnawing in their bellies." (p. 103)
Sound familiar?
Aundi Kolber, a licensed professional counselor, recently wrote another of my favorite books on this subject, Try Softer, in which she notes how she works with her clients to track their autonomic nervous system, the part of the nervous system in control of involuntary functions such as breathing and heart rate. Kolber writes, "When we can lovingly turn toward our pain, expressed in various ways by our bodies, we often begin to find we have choices we couldn't see before." (p. 25)
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
You have collected my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Ps. 56:8
As I turned my car towards home, looking out over the countryside along the way, a phrase - a prayer - formed in my mind:
Big shoulders, big hands, strong arms.
A prayer that was more like stream-of-consciousness began to spill out, "God please help my body to rest in you, not just my spirit, my soul." I placed my hand on my stomach and prayed again, "Help my body to rest in you."
Why do we do that? Why do we hold all the dissonance inside, forgetting the strength and love of the one who bottles our tears?
"Jesus, my heart is broken over the events around the world - Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Africa. I've been holding it all in my body, and my body is breaking from the load. Help me Jesus. Help me. I don't know what to pray, what to ask for. Fools that we are, will you help us who have caused these calamities, these miseries? Will you help those who are literally running for their lives? Where else can we turn?"
A vision of the cross came to mind, a vision of Christ slowly dying for these very moments, these very sins, this very brokenness that engulfs our world. Taking it all upon himself, feeling the weight of it, the pain.
But he was pierced because of our rebellion,
crushed because of our iniquities;
punishment for our peace was on him,
and we are healed by his wounds.
We all went astray like sheep;
we all have turned to our own way;
and the Lord has punished him
for the iniquity of us all. (Is. 53:5-6)
"God is invested in the entire arc of our humanity. He made us this way, and it's no accident that our physiology connects with his design," writes Kolber (p. 16). He didn't just suffer and die for the salvation of our souls. He did so for the salvation of our whole being. He made us and knows our suffering, knows how we carry it, how it cripples us and breaks us down.
I really don't believe God is looking for pious, carefully crafted prayers. "He knows how we speak when we are desperate," as Craig Keener notes in his commentary on the Psalms. God help us to remember to bring to you our anxieties, our cares, our exasperated utterances of desperate prayer! God is not small, weak, unable to cope. He is not like us, his ways so vastly beyond our understanding - o magnum mysterium.
May he who crafted us also help us to remember that we were not built for this, not built to carry these burdens. In the words of the hymn by Elijah Hoffman,
I must tell Jesus! I just tell Jesus!
I cannot bear my burdens alone.
I must tell Jesus, I must tell Jesus!
Jesus can help me,
Jesus alone.
Big shoulders, big hands, strong arms.