At my final appointment with the surgeon this week, with compassion in his eyes and firmness in his voice he said, “You need to find a way to move forward. Yes, mistakes were made. Those mistakes saved your life.” Tears sprang up in my eyes as I recognized the truth in what he said. It’s really the same as what the oncologist said to me two weeks ago. Examine the story I am telling myself. Don’t let it define me.

- Hope on her blog; emphasis mine, link within the quote, her’s.

Whether I or you, dear reader, have gone through what my friend Hope has experienced is not important. What is important is that as most of us have each experienced deeply damaging to our psyche we must examine the story we are telling ourselves and not let it define us but find a way to move forward.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;

I have a story about that passage from before MB and I were married and how it was the turning point to making it possible for me to allow myself to be married. I’ve told it before on other incarnations of luminous.miseries but I leave that now because I want I realize I allowed it to become something of a happy proof text for living.

That doesn’t mean how I applied it wasn’t true and helpful, it was but as life goes on, 30 years on, so much more happens, hurts, disappointments, deaths, serious illness – ok – and now I revisit that passage that came to mind as I read Hope’s words. The passage goes on to speak of how “we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”  Being reconciled to God is hardly a one-off thing. No. So, I find myself processing, asking prayerfully,

how does this passage from 2 Corinthians 5

• inform me about my story that I tell myself?
• if God has reconciled me to him how much of me, what aspects of me, have I acknowledged/surrendered ‘back’ into His care?
• is any of that consistent with the story I have been telling myself?
• tell me about being a minister of reconciliation, i.e. can I be one to my self?
• what’s the story I should be telling myself?
• what am I do, practically, to reconcile with God (and with my ‘self’ which is something of the same thing; is it not)?

//thrive! [and prayers for Hope, me, you too.

///2 Corinthians 5:16ff NRSV