When I was a between 11 and 13, I had a few black t-shirts and a pair of black jeans.
Around that time, there was someone in my community who was too old to be attracted to me. It was someone who went to my church, who I saw regularly and couldn’t get away from. He would stand near me at during youth group or at the back of church after the service, and quietly say things to me. One day, he told me I looked good in black.
So I stopped wearing it.
I was reading something online recently, and the website did that thing where instead of a list of links at the bottom of the page, they have the next article right underneath the first. It’s just there waiting for you, and you can see it before you’re even done reading the first article. The bait article was a list of celebrity memoirs you just have to read.
I’ve read a few memoirs, but they aren’t my favorite genre. I’m not into celebrity culture or the lives of famous people. Being famous sounds like my worst nightmare, so why would I want to read about someone else’s experience with it?
But one of the top images in the bait article was the cover of This Is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare, by Gabourey Sidibe (gei·br·ee si·duh·bei). I’ve heard the name before, but I’ve never seen any of her work. I just saw her face on the cover and thought, I have to read that book.
This post picks up where this one left off.
The night I wrote the post about finding healing, I sat hunched on the sofa over my laptop, with terrible posture.
I’d been resting my stiff neck on a hot pack all afternoon. I had tried to meditate it away, pray over it, and medicate it. I’d talked with the Chaplain about the stress I thought was causing the pain. I’d slept flat on my back to reduce tension, and had done every other thing I could think of, including giving the rest of my family massages. (Fellow women may understand this subtle form of communication?)
I was pretty sure I was going to have to seek professional help in the morning.
After our first gong bath experience, I had the feeling I was missing something. Something I might have been open to if I hadn’t been late and in a bad mood when we arrived. There was another gong bath coming up, at a different location and a time that worked better for us, so we gave it another shot.
If you’ve been to enough Christian concerts and speaking events, this has probably happened to you: a room that is full of people, and full of the Holy Spirit.
If you aren’t a believer, that idea might make you feel uncomfortable, but stick with me. There’s a lot of things about the world that make all of us uncomfortable, and if we can’t let ourselves squirm a little while we try to put ourselves in one another’s shoes, then we should stop asking for acceptance from the people we are secretly (or not so secretly) judging. But that is another blog post altogether.
