I'm doing ACT therapy and it's helping me.
I'm learning how to incorporate mindfulness in relationships.
I've completed an Expert Patient Program to help me self-manage better, and a Coping With Life course that uses CBT to lessen anxiety and promotes stress management.
Busy me! I wrote the following meditation to deal with the aftermath of my 10-year health path, which in itself can provoke regret and difficult emotion that I must deal with daily in prayer. This post is for the sick and the brave who have lost their definition of grace amongst pain, tears and heartbreak.
A confession: I often feel that grace is someone else changing the light bulb. I know in my heart this is not what grace is. Grace is Jesus saying 'you are forgiven'.
I used to think that grace meant that Jesus said 'I will supply what you need to change the light bulb'.
Grace isn't that. God does provide, and that is gracious...
Provision is a function of grace and not its entirety. Look at the Holocaust. Look at Genocide, and War. Grace does not unfailingly change our interior or exterior states.
I have mental illness and Jesus hasn't magicked away my symptoms, I still struggle with internal weather. People around me don't (and perhaps can't) comprehend the social issues that have made recovery problematic.
I'm a person who is always praying for solutions in her life. I'm looking feverishly for proof God loves me...
That could come in the form of a person, or a goal I want to achieve, or even the restriction of damaging stigma or unhelpful behaviours from people placed in my life (or who wished they were)...
Here is my little poem to grace.
What the grace of Jesus says is: 'I am with you -- if the light shines or not!'
What if Jesus says, then 'till the end of time I will be with you. In the darkness.'
What if he claims 'I will light you from the inside.'
What if he promises 'When light cannot be manufactured I will forgive you, you are not responsible for what I already have taken care of.'
What if Jesus encourages 'I will help you to forgive yourself.'
What if Jesus calls 'when no-one wants to help you I will let you relax into knowing that a sense of my touch is enough to give you a vision.'
What if Jesus delights that 'at the end of the day, all of the work is done because you saw well when I provided the light, I will forgive you.'
What if Jesus says that 'if at the end of the day, none of my work is done because you saw badly, I will forgive you, also.'
What if Jesus longs that 'when you can do nothing, on one of those days when you fear hazard, I will pursue you in friendship.'
What if Jesus said to me that 'we can hold hands in the darkness, until our lips whisper the same prayers.
We will cry out together, “Abba, restore us!”
Allow us to light up the room of ours.
Restore us to glory, for we are one.'
I can see now that grace is the power that will encourage me to worship Jesus for all he has done on earth and in heaven. Whatever state I'm in -- however meagre my offering -- this is possible.