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This has been a week full of amazing synergistic connection with my Missional Tribe (more information to follow about who and what and all). As we were sharing, these very purple words bubbled up from deep in my soul. AbbE suggested that he was reading a post on Hope for The Virtual Abbess ... and I agreed.
Before you read my story, there are two blog posts that you really should read first. The first is from Erika Haub at The Margins and the second is from
I had so many thoughts swirling around in my head as I read his story. He (following Erika) is talking very much about the essence of the Virtual Abbess and her Purple Martyrdom, my friends … for I have spent a lifetime being a very good friend to many who just wanted to take advantage of what I had to offer.
But when life turned Purple and shattered and I became a broken-down, beyond chronically exhausted mother desperate to hang on hour-by-hour in order to beat the odds of recovering from catastrophic accidents and care for a newborn and two toddlers and answer the call of God to actually serve in an amazing pastoral ministry opportunity … I found myself very inconvenient to the many I thought were my friends … who neither wept with me or came to help me fold laundry because my neck and shoulder and back injuries prevented me from even doing this small task … and kept forgetting that I was broken, because after seven years I should be better, shouldn't I?
They were not there the day the doctor told me that my chances for recovery were poor, at best – and I had 8 ½ more months of pregnancy and a third child still ahead … and no family nearby to help me....
But it took a sister in Christ who (unbeknownst to me at the time) prayed me into being our middle school PTSA President (she is my right-hand as PTSA Secretary) … and then became my real life House Fairy last spring (trying to prepare for summer) and just recently again in November (trying to recover from summer). She would come – sometimes for 15 minutes, sometimes for 2 hours – and help me wash dishes, or clothes, or the kitchen floor, or the bathroom, or the kids' room (again!), or sort through stuff and rejoice with every little thing I either threw out or gave away … telling me what Fly Lady would do and then helping me do it.
And I have never been so humiliated and so honored at the same time, that this precious sister would carve out time from her busy days to come into the nightmare that has been my house these past eight years and help me break it down into pieces and get it done side-by-side is beyond words still. This is a woman who knows how to "wash feet" … and she saw the need that so many chose not to and didn't try to tell me that "Life's a bitch, isn't it?" or "These hard times will pass—everybody goes through this." or "Just suck it up and quit whining." or any number of other unhelpful things that I have heard over the years. She saw my need and moved to be Christ's hands and feet…to yoke up with me to help me carry the burden.
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Wherever you are on this 7th Day of Advent, the last day of pondering Purple Hope, I pray that you will do two things:
First, choose to listen to those who need to have someone truly hear them … listen them into free speech (as our friends from Allelon say) by letting them talk long enough that they are able to hear themselves—perhaps for the first time—and in being heard, perhaps they will have the courage to share their heart's simple-but-seemingly-hopeless need.
Second, choose to watch for these Kairos-time moments where you might have the privilege of being Christ’s hands or feet or shoulder to some brother or sister with an empty spot in their yoke. Perhaps they will invite you into their pain and allow you to slip on their yoke and even out their burden. Might just take 15 minutes … might take two hours … one time, or once a week, or once a month, or whatever it takes to meet their need.
Dare to have hope … dare to give hope.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
AbiSomeone
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