What do you want me to do for you?
Luke, 18 v 41
I don’t know. It’s a familiar defence. One that I go to often in TC, when I’m too terrified to think of what the honest answer is, what I really want from something or someone. Safer is to give the answer that I think is wanted; to say ‘I don’t know’ a slight improvement – but a refusal or fear to think about what I want.
I could begin to answer this question, though. I could say ‘healing’. I even have some sense of what that means. It does not mean that miraculously I want to wake up fully able-bodied, mental health problems-free. It means, rather, being able to find wholeness in Christ in spite of and through physical and mental disability.
But what does that wholeness look like? That’s where I become terror-struck. Where I want to scream that I don’t know.
But, where sometimes I can see a glimmer of light – of Life beyond fear and trembling. But I’m terrified of what it might take to get there. To be able to let go of the bits of my career that are less than helpful, the collaborations that suck me dry. The work that is more emotionally burdensome than it is rewarding. To think about what it would mean to be able to connect with others properly, at work and at home. And elsewhere. Even, to have a wife. To be unashamed of who I am. These things feel like a very long way away.
But that is what, Christ, I want you to do for me. Free me to be fulfilled in my career, to connect with others around me; and to be unashamedly me. Saying that feels terrifying.
