The Lifesaving Church by Rachael A. Keefe

Author:Rachael A. Keefe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chalice Press
Published: 2018-03-17T05:50:06+00:00

What Your Congregation Can Do Now:

• Create a safe space for people to share their stories without judgment.

• Recognize the value of belonging in a loving, accepting community and endeavor to be that community.

• Communicate the gospel in a way that affirms the value of each person as God’s beloved.

Chapter 5: The Body of Christ Is Beloved

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,

so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

—John 3:16

Over the years, I have heard many therapists describe recovery as peeling away the layers of an onion. This metaphor made me reluctant to engage, because it symbolized my deepest fear, for when you peel away all the layers of an onion, you are left with nothing. If I peeled away all the layers of pain, would I find nothing? If I were not broken beyond repair or worthless beyond redemption, who was I? Would anyone really see me if I were free of pain? This fear may not make sense to anyone who hasn’t suffered from psychache, but it was real, and it complicated my journey toward wholeness considerably.

I used to be so afraid of anyone finding out that I had tried to kill myself. I didn’t want anyone to think I was crazy. I didn’t want to be dismissed. It never occurred to me that my walking around at 102 pounds made me look pretty crazy to most people. While I had promised John and my therapist that I would not try suicide again, I made no such promise about courting death. This is how I described my eating disorder:

“Only a Stray Fantasy”1

A little spark goes bang

And a new world grows.

Quickly, too quickly, it encompasses.

No more real life,

No more pain,

Only dreams of what could be,

What may be, someday,

Things that will never be.

The spark grows to an intriguing flame.

Nothing can leave it,

It becomes reality.

All things are perfected.

No faults,

No flaws,

Only perfection.

The flame becomes too hot.

It burns.

It is real,

The one and only reality.

Scorching flames break up innocence.

No more love,

No more happiness,

Only the burning pain,

The pain of losing a fantasy,

Letting it become too real.

No more smiles,

No more cries,

No more laughs,

No more me,

Only a stray fantasy.

For years, I felt lost and alone. The times when I thought most about suicide were the times I felt unloved and unlovable. As an adolescent, I didn’t think anyone loved me. My mother had a limited capacity for emotions of any kind, and she was seldom demonstrative. In her later years, my mother would always say, “Love you,” as we ended any phone conversation. I suppose she did love me, sort of. My mother loved the version of me she constructed for herself. She never understood her sensitive, artist, poet daughter who believed wholeheartedly in God. When I went to seminary, she told people I went to Princeton (that was brag-worthy!), but she would say I was in human services. She always told me that I was wasting my life with poetry and theology. She was quite taken aback each time one of my three books of theological poetry was published.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.