With-ness Revisited

“How was your winter break?“ I asked my newish neighbor as I offered her a loaf of freshly baked bread. I had only been in her home once before.

With just one question, she and her husband, whom I was just meeting, shamelessly gave me a window into their power dynamics and relational tensions as they answered. Not my usual experience on initial encounters. I find it to be a holy offering when others entrust their struggles to me. I learned much about them as I continued to ask questions, desiring to know them.

After some very authentic banter, her husband departed to pick up their daughters from Arabic school at the mosque. She shared family stories of tension and struggle. 

I was with a woman longing to be known. 

Within a short time, she offered, “Moving here has been so hard. I’m so lonely.” She began to weep. They were expecting community to come easily in this city with a much greater Muslim population than their previous city. 

“We were hoping there’d be a high population of American-born Muslims here, but they’re mostly transplants from the Middle East,” she said, pain filling her eyes.

“Why were you hoping for American-born Muslims?” I asked, curious why that’s appealing to her.

“Because Middle Eastern Muslims tend to believe that people with special needs have no value. They look down on my kids and want nothing to do with our family as a result,” Tears still overflowed from her eyes. Three of their four children are children with special needs.

Her high schooler with special needs can’t make a friend at school because the kids aren’t kind to people like her. Her daughter, who is Kamise’s friend, started “covering” (wearing a hijab) last summer and she’s aware of the gazes from others which seem to create a chasm between them. I pursued her with deeper curiosity, wanting to understand a taste of what it’s like to live in their shoes, to be a 13-year-old girl experiencing isolation as a result of living “covered” in public.

STUNNING HONESTY

“You’ve also been busy, so we haven’t been able to spend time together,” she shared. Tears continued to flow as she lived in her ache and unmet longing. Her son, who’d thieved my shoes once again, wrapped his skinny arms around her to comfort her. At the same time, I wrapped my not-so-skinny arms around both of them and joined their embrace. 

Then she told me how my daughters have been the greatest blessing to her family since moving to Orlando because they’ve loved them so extravagantly. She wept as she shared that the highlight of her high schooler with special needs’ day is the big hug Mez gives her at the bus stop every morning. 

I was awed by her bravery as she offered her heart to a woman she’s been with only once many months ago. I don’t know if her openness and honesty is a cultural thing or her willingness to bare her naked soul to a woman who just wants to be with her.

As headlights appeared in the driveway, she swiftly erased the tears from her cheeks, breathed deeply and asked if she’d erased the signs of vulnerability from her face. I wondered how her husband would respond if she wasn’t successful. I wondered what stories have been written in their lives around vulnerability and tears.  And then it seemed an even greater privilege that she’d offered those to me. 

TASTING CULTURE

As I absorbed it all, I thought about how I was tasting the culture in which Jesus lived for the first time. 

“Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Was the question Jesus’s disciples asked when passing a man blind from birth. 

Hello to our skewed vision of God. Hello to the formulas which suffocate with-ness.

Tasting it gave me a deeper understanding of the radical nature of God’s kingdom. A God who incarnated himself to be with us, touching those whom society deemed untouchable. I wonder what it was like for the blind man to feel Jesus pack mud wet with God’s spit over his eyes—and then gaze into the eyes of God. I wonder what it was like for the adulteress woman to stand beside Jesus, fully exposed, as he drew who knows what in the sand to cover her, distracting the gaze of her accusers. I wonder what it was like for the bleeding woman to feel the healing energy of Jesus in her body with the touch of his robe. And I wonder what it was like when Jesus desired to know who touched him—desiring to look into the eyes of the one with such faith. These people society deemed unclean, they were the ones he interlaced with. And they were the ones open to His restoration power.

As I looked in the face of my new friend and sat with her in her grief, I was in awe that it is our family, the Jesus-followers, who are blessed to receive her family as they are and love them with His love because we follow that kind of God. A God of love who wanted us to see Him as He is so desperately that He came to be with us, these ones with special needs. Because of His love in me, I desired to set aside my life for a few hours to interlace mine with a neighbor unknowingly coddling a breaking heart. This is one of the wonders of following Jesus. This is the wonder of the incarnation—God with us—and in Christ—God in us, giving us the capacity to love with His love. 

With whom might you incarnate the love of God this week through curiosity and presence? I’d love to hear your stories.