The Cracks in Your Vessel
“We all carry some degree of brokenness in our human vessels. But the ultimate goal is restoration, one sacred and sanctified thought and action at a time. ”
So much of the messaging from leadership we received the past year was fragmented and shifting. We weren’t sure if businesses or schools were going to stay open or be closed. We weren’t sure if we could gather, where and with how many, indoors or outdoors. We wrestled with losing our freedom while praying at the same time that the majority of our nation would adhere to protocol.
“A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside him or herself, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.” Parker Palmer
We may be looking to leadership for what we need and find it wanting. Especially in the week we have just experienced. As a follower, you want to be sure that the leaders you are listening to have done the work of sourcing truth and are offering you confident and secure messaging. You want to feel safe. You want to feel inspired. You want a reason to believe.
But we know that leaders leak. There are cracks in their vessels. They are not perfect. In a crisis, what lays beneath the surface comes out. Words and actions matter.
The cost of a leader leading without foresight, and misunderstanding consequences of their words on the world, can be devastating. We expect that they have done the work of integration, of accessing the power of wholeness of emotional, mental, physical and spiritual health.
But we forget to look inside ourselves to see if there are cracks in our vessel,
underneath the surface,
that are at peril of exploding into a million little pieces
when we are stressed to our breaking point.
Another week of kids home from school. More weeks of lockdown. Uncertainty about the length of time we can sustain the new normal. Apathy. Fear. More pivots.
It is not just for leaders to shoulder the responsibility for their internal wellbeing,
It’s for you.
It’s for me.
We all have influence and carry the responsibility of leaving an emotional wake. Will it be positive? Life-giving? Or will our words increase the divide between us word by word until it becomes an uncrossable chasm?
You can’t help restore a fractured world when you haven’t tended
to the fractured pieces of your own life.
We all carry some degree of brokenness in our human vessels. But the ultimate goal is restoration, one sacred and sanctified thought and action at a time.
Upon coming to Christ, we were to pick up our mission to be ambassadors of reconciliation. We were to show the world how to kneel at the cross, where every broken and divisive thought was healed and the power of the enemy to separate us from God, and from each other, was rendered null and void.
How put together are you feeling right now? Perhaps it is time to attend to the cracks in your vessel. Perhaps it is time to invite God to begin the work restoration in you.
Do the work. Look inside and ask God to look at the fragments of your life and begin to put them together and create something new.
Transformed people transform people.
Healed people heal people.
Free people free people.
I pray for all of you daughters across the nation that you would become aware of the many ways God is at work inside you, transforming you, in ways that are meant for you to impact your spheres of influence.
Here is what you must believe.
· That you are loved.
· That you are a child of God.
· That you are who He says He is.
· That you are meant to be salt and light in a confused and dark world.
· That you are seated with Christ.
· That in the fire, He is with you and will bring you out.
God is at work transforming you, and strengthening the core of your vessel, one crack at a time.
Cathie