Our bodies seem to have been created for sloughing? Sloughing is defined as the act of casting off dead tissue or cells. According to The American Academy of Dermatology, the average person looses anywhere from 50 to 100 strands of hair a day. We loose an estimated one million skin cells per hour. This is not only natural, but necessary for optimal health. If this is the way our bodies were made to function on the outside, why should our insides be any different?
When I fail to remember the value, and importance of shedding the built up atrophy of my soul, I head down a frail path. Life, responsibilities and circumstances build up and form layers of dead weight that are important to yield in order to give our minds and bodies rest.
Why do we carry burdens and worries so long? I often bottle worries deep inside me and bear them longer than needed. Then when I cannot shoulder the weight anymore, I have to make a critical choice; I either shed them or become subordinate to them.
Have you ever noticed how good you feel after you release a burden to a trusted friend? It can sometimes feel like an extreme weight loss. We just feel lighter. A load has been lifted, and we can breathe with less effort.
Not too long ago, my son was wearing the weight of a heavy burden that had been enslaving him too long. He finally reached a point where he could not keep it at bay anymore. He needed to “shed” the weight of his heart to someone. He said it all from behind the voice of one trying to hold it all in, but tainted with the sound of tears. I knew that sound. He could not hide it. Not from me. Not from me who knows him so well. So he released it all bravely, and then he was rescued by a deep, desperate sleep.
Isn’t that an organic picture of life? We try to hold it all in, and conceal that which opposes us. We try hard, and then a little harder to not be found. Then there comes a point when we are pinned under the pressure of the fire we are walking through, and we release it in a spewing of toxic ash that has been brewing under the surface.
It is in those times, when we let ourselves be fully known that we can be fully loved. It is those moments of true identity and authenticity that afford us the pacifying balm that our true self-longs for every day. It’s in the most desperate moments that we are most receptive to receiving the mending, and comfort of Jesus, who already knows us just as we are anyway. Masking of inadequacies only delays God’s refurbishment.
We live in a world that is in the business of replacing all that is broken, but Jesus is in the business of restoration. We shoulder burdens and limitations that we were never meant to bear. Why do we delay our recovery so long? There comes moments in this life when it takes more courage to fall apart in the presence of someone who loves us than it does to keep it all together.
At the heart of us all we just really want to be seen, heard and understood. This is a beckoning to trust in our Savior who in His timing restores, and makes all things strong and steadfast. Part of the renewal process is releasing all the rot that begins to infest our souls.
Restoration rarely happens how we envision it, and never as timely as we would like, but all good things have to happen on a timetable that is outside of ourselves. Overseen and orchestrated by The One who knitted us together, every little detail, with his soft, sovereign hands.
I am thankful for those moments when courage wins. I am thankful for glimpses of people’s true identity. I pray as we all mature in our secure standing of Christ’s righteousness that we will become more comfortable shedding the layers of entanglement and trade them in for the acceptance and love that transparency affords.
It is in our purest identity that we are open to the most beautiful of possibility. May we all embrace, learn from and release all things that embattle us. We were given them for a reason, a resource and as a bridge for restoration.