Blessed Are You Who Break

The goal of a life is not to “stay together” but to fall apart, unravel, unmoor.

Dearly Beloveds,

I am a woman unmoored. Pushed out to sea with no real destination in mind, for the first time in my life I do not have a plan. I will float. I will ride the waves. I will see where I land–and hope it is somewhere warm and soft, fertile and free. 

When I told a friend I was having a midlife crisis, she said, “Midlife liberation.” Since then, I refer to my midlife situation as a midlife liberation-awakening-reckoning because at any given moment it’s one or the other or all. 

I long to be free. I continue to wake up. And in order to be both free and awake, I must reckon (and fall in love again and again) with the depths of who I am. 

Starting tomorrow, I will take some extended time off from my day job to tend to my emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical health. It is a gift that I get to take this time (something all people deserve access to and that I’ll spend my life working to make so), and getting here was not particularly pretty. I tend to fight tooth and nail to hold it together, and the older I get the more difficult it becomes to keep the breaking at bay. 

As I was making the decision to ask for help and then receive the help offered, I also received copy edits back on Blessed Are the Women: Naming and Reclaiming Women’s Stories from the Gospels, which is in its final stages of the editorial process before heading to formatting and print. (Eeee! It’s all happening! She’ll be here so, so soon!) 

Each time I open the file to read what I wrote, I feel a tinge of curiosity and anticipation, wondering, “Will I still like what I’ve written? Will it still feel true?” 

Perhaps this is the fate of any artist/creator. We teeter on the edge of a hope and a prayer that what we set out to do in the first place is actually what is manifest on the page or canvas or loom. 

With my coffee warmed and the candles lit, I opened the copy edit file and began reading, again, what I wrote many moons ago. And there it was, right there in the Prologue, the wisdom I’ve known and lived many times in my life:

Of course, those of us who have fallen apart know the gift of such falling, the grace of such breaking. We also know that it’s laughable for any of us to think we’re not a second away from collapsing at any moment, and knowing this fragility, this vulnerability, this human-ness is what keeps us close to ourselves, to God, and to others.

Reading this part of my story again, on a day in which I felt completely broken open, collapsed at the altar of “I don’t know” and “I need help” offered a sacred reminder of how the goal of a life is not to “stay together” but to fall apart, unravel, unmoor. To take the time to marvel at the pieces on the ground, with their jagged edges and interesting colors, and instead of sweeping them into the trash, asking them, “What beauty do you wish to create? What truth do you long to reveal?” 

Jesus says in Matthew 11:28-30 (CEB), “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves. My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.”

I can’t help but think of all the women who heard Jesus say these words that day and of all the women who hear him say them now. Did they (do we) laugh and think, “There’s no possible way?” Were they (are we) curious and wanting to learn more? Could life, even amidst its burdens, somehow be lighter? Easier? Something they (and we) could bear?

The Scripture tells us that Susanna, Joanna, Mary Magdalene, and other women traveled with Jesus and the disciples and “provided for them out of their resources.” Something about Jesus’ message called to them; something resonated; something made them not only follow, but also fund Jesus’ ministry. 

I wonder if it wasn’t that they felt lighter leaving the lives they’d always known to forge a path, follow a way, and give their resources to a community that felt truer and therefore lighter than anything or any way they’d known before.

Sometimes liberation means we change outward things like jobs, relationships, communities, cities–but more often liberation means we do the inner work (through spiritual practice and emotional discovery) that helps us detach from old patterns that keep us carrying heavy loads. 

Where might we go, who might we be, and how might we live, right here and right now, if we leave the shore and ride the waves with curiosity, gentleness, and love? 

Of course, when we liberate ourselves, we offer an invitation for others to liberate themselves, too. Audre Lorde says, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” Put another way, when one woman gets free, she loosens the chains for others to get free. 

Genuine liberation billows out, invites in, and makes a freer way possible for everyone. 

When I think of Blessed Are the Women: Naming and Reclaiming Women’s Stories from the Gospels, I think of a full grown woman standing her sacred ground. She knows who she is, and she is unafraid to live it. She is not a baby or a child, though babies and children, both, are powerful and sacred teachers in their own right. She, instead, is aged, though something about her is ageless. 

And instead of being only one woman, she is many women. Both personal and universal, both individual and collective–when one woman speaks her truth, all of us speak our truth. And aren’t we only able to speak our truth in the first place because we look to our left and our right and see other women standing alongside us, their presence, their breath, their bodies giving us the strength to open our mouths and sing? 

Alone is a lie that everything counter to Love would have us believe. 

So, as I set out on the open sea, I am anything but alone. I am with Jesus and the women, praying, singing, and blessing–as we’ve always done, as we will always do, because we and our broken pieces are blessed. 

Blessed Are You Who Break 

Blessed are you who break. 

Blessed are you who question. 

Blessed are you who don’t know what you want. 

Blessed are you who do know what you want. 

Blessed are you who are unafraid to tell the truth. 

Blessed are you who still seek what is true. 

Blessed are you who are unraveling. 

Blessed are you who are still trying to keep it together. 

Blessed are you who are unmoored. 

Blessed are you who remain on the shore. 

Blessed are you who have open wounds. 

Blessed are you who have healing scars. 

Blessed are you who rise up. 

Blessed are you who lie down. 

Blessed are you who sing. 

Blessed are you who weep. 

Blessed are you at the beginning. 

Blessed are you in the middle. 

Blessed are you at the end. 

Wave upon wave, 

every piece of you

is blessed. 

Amen. 

See you back here next week, beloveds.

-Claire 

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