Can these bones live?
Has your life ever been so disrupted that you found yourself asking that question? All of us who have passed through—or still inhabit—the valley of the shadows of abuse, addiction, displacement, divorce, financial catastrophe, chronic illness, terminal illness, mental illness, or death know what cataclysmic disruption looks like. We spend our days in survival mode. If we can find the energy to hope, we look forward to a day when we will be through the worst of it and feel like we can stand up and breathe on our own again.
During the COVID pandemic, my marriage ended abruptly, I had to sell the dream house my spouse and I had purchased just four years earlier, my first pastorate ended badly, and I found myself in a temporary job in a town where I knew no one 800 miles from my family. I sank into a prolonged depression. I fantasized feeling reconnected with humanity and safe in my own skin. Gradually, the weight and darkness began to lift. But I was surprised, emerging from the worst of it in 2024, to find myself not elatedly liberated but utterly depleted. A pile of dry bones.
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