The main sign went up on a busy intersection, in the heart of the city, just four blocks from our first offices on 8th and Burnside. After years of being nomadic, God brought us back to the heart of the city, in a building that we could not afford to buy but are leasing for the same cost as the school where we have been meeting. This entire blessing comes amidst a budget shortfall that is at a critical place. When the blessing of God and reality of crisis are enough to fracture your psyche.  It is here in the midst of all of this that our staff and countless volunteers have worked tirelessly to make this huge move into our new home happen.

But, sitting around that fire, we were tired. Celebrating and thankful but just really tired. It was there, caught in a contemplative paradox, that a stranger walked up to our fire. He was probably in his late twenties early thirties holding his IPA and a pack of American Spirits. He asked us for a light and sat down. He told us that he was a vendor at concerts and festivals and liked to tell jokes and poems to strangers. We smiled and tried to be polite but were tired and inwardly rolling our eyes back into our heads. Really? Jokes and Poems? He asked if he could tell us a joke or a poem. Eric picked “joke” because we needed the laugh. The jokes were horrible. I chose poem just to get him to quit telling jokes. He asked who my favorite poet was and I told him Wendell Berry, an incredible writer, subversive Christians and sustainable farmers. I thought he wouldn’t know who Wendell Berry was and Eric and I could get back to our conversation.

Jesus knew we needed Wendell Berry to remind us that doing it the right way, waiting on God and practicing resurrection is at the core of this journey that Jesus has us on. He may have been a wandering stranger or an angel who liked IPA and cigarettes but for us it was a gracious reminder that God is here, with us and for us and  that we have to stay on this journey of faith regardless of how we may tire from it.

As we walked up the hill, past a trophy shop, a strip club and a hardware store, the sun literally broke through the clouds and shined on a massive sign that said Imago Dei Community. Our little symbol that God is our living and resurrected God who has placed us in the middle of the city to practice resurrection. Follow Jesus regardless of how hard the journey is, never resign yourself to worldly tactics and  never stop believing that our God reigns.

When I got home that night, I parked the car in my driveway and walked up the front steps of my house. I looked down and saw a book sitting by the front door. It was Weddell Berry’s The Hidden Wound. I had ordered it on Amazon awhile back and it showed up today of all days.

In the midst of the mighty acts of God’s blessing, He still shows up in the simple but profound faith building acts of kindness. A great friend, a free sign, a stranger, a poem, and a book on my front porch.

In his terrific commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Frederick Dale Brunner outlines the four main ways that the Kingdom has been understood by the church and he summarizes the thoughts of K.L. Schmidts work. The Kingdom comes from heaven, it comes through preaching the Gospel, it comes into the heart of believers, and it comes into history through peace and justice.

1.    The Kingdom comes from Heaven
This is the Kingdom coming in all of it fullness when it will be on earth as it is in heaven. This is the hope that the church has in a world where little kingdoms seem to be having their day and war and evil and sin seem to rule the moment. The Kingdom will come in the fullness of time and Christ will be rightly throned as King of Kings and every knee will bow. This is the hope that the church holds onto and the moment that we long for, pray for and work toward.

2.    The Kingdom comes through Preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ
The Gospel is a royal announcement that the worlds’ King has come to us in Jesus and he is going to reconcile all things to himself on earth and in heaven. Preaching of this announcement is a dynamic activity. What we often right off as a dull sermon could very well have the powerful activity of the Spirit of God bringing the Kingdom to bear in the world. The preaching of the centrality of Christ in the Gospel is central to the work of the Kingdom because through this preaching activity the Kingdom breaks into the lives of God’s people who repent of sin and receive the grace and new life which is given to us in Jesus.

3.    The Kingdom comes into our hearts
Wherever Christ is made Lord of our lives there the Kingdom is. In his people that are surrendered to Jesus his Kingdom is showing up in our hearts and forming us into the image of Jesus for the sake of the world. This is why the church is the one place on earth where Jesus’ lordship as King of the world should be unattested. His is our God King and his brings the fullness of his peace and presence into our lives through the union he has made with us through his Spirit. In our hearts we set apart Christ as Lord and make room for his reign to spread throughout the whole of our life and being. The end result is a people who live into the hope that another world is coming and has come to us in Jesus and we are his peculiar people who love sacrificially and live lives of worship that glorify our King Jesus.

4.    The Kingdom comes into History now through the church
The people of God anticipating the fullness of the Kingdom coming in the future, announcing the dynamic power of the Gospel of Jesus and enthroning Christ in their hearts, are a people who work for peace and justice on earth as it is in heaven.  The Kingdom of God breaks into our world wherever injustice is being torn down for the love of the King and peace is replacing violence and hostility. This is the on going work of the church as we live into the reality that the Kingdom has come among us and show the world what it is like to live in a Kingdom of light in the midst of darkness.  We work hard for peace and justice because this displays the Kingdom of Jesus to the world.

It seems to me that churches and people tend to pick one aspect of the Kingdom of God and focuses there insisting that the other aspects are not really crucial pieces of the Kingdom. This is unfortunate because we essentially make our own little kingdom out of one aspect and discount the others. In doing this we essentially reduce the Kingdom into something that it is not. The Kingdom is not less than all of these aspects combined.

It is tough to pull off, and I don’t think we can do it without the Kingdom breaking into our own hearts and lives.  I do pray that we would be a people striving for the fullness of the Kingdom to break in on earth. A people with a great hope for the Kingdom to come in all its fullness, a people who boldly proclaim the Gospel of Jesus and watch the Kingdom break in through the Gospel, a people who have enthroned no other King but Jesus in their hearts and experience the transforming power that comes from worshipping Jesus as Lord and we would be a people who would give our lives away to the world so that the Kingdom would be displayed in places of violence and injustice bringing with it the Kingdom reign of peace and justice through Jesus Christ.

Our front porch has become a gathering spot for community. Some of the deepest conversations I have had with my son and my friends have taken place on the porch. Sometimes its freezing, other times it’s a warm summer night, but regardless we gather here and share our hearts and stories, experiencing the grace and presence of Christ in our relationship with one another.

We gathered on the porch and each man wrote a letter to Josh, that they shared. Giving him wisdom, affirmation and a warm welcome into the community of men.  It was an amazing time for Him. I could hardly keep it together as they shared their love for my son.

One of the things that Jeanne and I have always prayed for is that our kids would have specific people in their lives that would affirm our love for Jesus and help them on their own journey of faith.  We have asked God to do something bigger in their lives than we could do on our own as parents. He answered those prayers.

The men chipped in a bought him a killer knife that will be the fear of all pieces of wood that he widdles away on. But something much larger happened there. It was not that something magical happened and the confusion, innocence, and youthfulness of being 18 disappeared. What did happen is that a young man was affirmed in his identity as a man, welcomed into the community and called to be all that God is calling him to be as a Son of God.

It’s a remarkable thing to see your 18 year old son “want” to be on the porch with these men on a Friday night, and not be out hanging with his friends. He wanted to be there because something him desires to be what God has made him and this community of friends is the place where he gets to become that.

I know that through all that God has for him in the years to come, this event will be a marker for his journey and these men will be there for him. The gift of relationship with other men is the most powerful thing you can give a guy on his 18th birthday.
To be fair I was flying blind in all of this. I have never been part of something like this and most the guys there hadn’t either. We were not sure if it was going to come off cheesy, or lame or awkward. I didn’t know if he would hate it and want to run for his life.

The risk was so worth it and I hope that perhaps it gives you a bit of courage to call your own sons into the community. I hope that the church would call our young men without Dads onto the porch and let them know that the absence of their physical fathers does not mean the absence of men who care, and it in know way means they are deficient as men.

I read my letter to my son as the last one to go. I was choking out the words through tears of love and joy. I had to pause while I was reading because of the emotions, my friend Luke said, “preach it”. For some reason it struck me, that is what we were doing. Through all the emotions, and our own inexperience in doing this we were proclaiming a great God to my son and calling him to the great adventure of being a man.

Here is the last paragraph of my letter to my son:

Blessing
Lastly, it’s a joy to give you my blessing. I don’t want you to ever doubt this and I want you to hold it deep inside you. No matter where life takes you or what mistakes you make I want you to always remember this blessing.
Joshua McKinley; you are my beloved Son, and in you I am well pleased!
I love you Josh, Welcome to the party!
Dad

For the last nine and half years Imago has lived out of rented spaces all over the city. We have been nomadic in a real sense, moving Sunday locations every three or four years.
Our dream has always been to be in the heart of the city of Portland.  From the time that my wife and I moved our family back here to start a church, we dreamed of being a community in the heart of the city.  A few years ago we set out to find a space that we could lease or renovate. The problem that always seemed to keep popping up was that facility costs in this area of town were really steep, and there were very few buildings that could hold us.

So we moved to Franklin High School and officed out of a church building that was donated to us but was too small for our community on Sundays. This started a great relationship with that school. We have met for worship in their performing arts auditorium for the last four years.  Over these last four years God has matured us as a community of faith in very tangible ways.  Expanding our heart for the city, our love for the church and our own personal transformation, these are just a few ways that we “grew up” as a congregation.

A couple of years ago I started a conversation with Dennis Easter who is the Pastor of Portland Foursquare. Portland Four sits in the heart of the city, with around a hundred thousand square feet of space.  Portland Four’s congregation has needed to “right size” themselves into a space that fits them, so they could move onto mission. We needed a space to expand our reach into the city that would be a Kingdom outpost for the Gospel in the heart of Portland.

After two years of talking, praying and committing our hearts to a vision that would see both our churches win, we will exchange buildings on June 20th.  God has been really gracious to all of us, as we have worked together to make this happen. His will and timing are profoundly perfect.  Our rent will be close to the same as it was at the High School, but we will have seven day a week use of the space and be the sole tenants. Franklin High will continue to be one of the five schools we are working with in the Portland area. We are grateful for the amazing teachers, principal, and staff that we have been in relationship with over the last four years.

So now WE Move

When God moves, then we follow. For the last ten years it has been a massive gift to be the pastor of Imago Dei Community, and God has proved his faithfulness to us time and again. This is another installment of the kindness of God who is serious about the city.
Couple of things that I am captured by in all of this:
1.    We learned to not let our facilities determine our mission.
In other words, don’t ever say you can’t do what God has put on your heart because you don’t have the space. We have discovered that the space followed the vision and mission. We have already had people working all over Portland serving the city and inviting people to Jesus. This doesn’t change what we have been doing it expands what we have been doing.
2.    Wait on God, he knows what he is doing.
You can grow an organization pretty quickly, but it takes time to make a community of disciples. God is interested in creating a people of God who look like Jesus. That takes a lot of time and can mean places on the journey when he has you wait, grow up and learn what it means to pray and be creative about his mission.
Pray for us as we move, if you are in town come by and see the new digs, starting on the 20th, look for the Imago sign on 12th and E Burnside.

Around that same time, I was talking with my close friend and mentor, Dr. Tom Hauff, who was writing a book about prayer. (Tom is a professor of Bible and theology at Multnomah University.) In one chapter of that book, he probes the idea of repetitive prayer for the salvation of the lost, and in our ongoing conversation, he has challenged me with a few mind benders.

On the surface, we probably make this request because we care deeply about people, and we want them to taste freedom and live the life Jesus offers. It is good to tell God what we care about. But below the surface, the repetitive request for the salvation of others might be born out of ill-conceived assumptions that conflict with our own beliefs about how salvation occurs, and it may show us that we do not know who we are, who God is or how he operates.

I started wondering if my repetitive prayer for the salvation of my sister was actually a waste of time and breath.

Consider the two prominent perspectives that have characterized Christian discourse about salvation for some time, say 2,000 years. We either understand salvation as a freely given way of eternal life that God long ago “predestined” some to receive, even before he built this world. He chose us and called us to himself according to his own decision making process; it is God’s choice. Or we understand our salvation as freely offered eternal life that we either accept or reject. God reveals himself and his Gospel to us, but, ultimately, it is our “free-will” decision to either accept or deny Jesus that determines our salvation. It is our choice.

Now, consider again the request for God to save my sister. If I hold the first view, I am asking him to change his sovereign choice. And if I hold the second view, I am asking God to overpower freedom and control her choice, which trumps “free” will altogether. From either perspective, then, the ongoing request for God to give her salvation conflicts with my own fundamental beliefs about God.

And here’s the real kicker. It seems like the New Testament writers were onto this same truth because you do not see them directly asking God to save other people. They express deep love and compassion for others. They ask that their lives could help people see the truth, that they might be part of the harvest, that doors might be opened for them to preach the Gospel, that there could be a witness of unity, love and wisdom among believers to the world around them. But their prayer is not, “God, please save so and so.” It is always, “God, please help us become the most accurate witnesses of Jesus that we can possibly be.”

The more I think about it, the more I understand that useful prayers for the lost are really prayers for Christians and the Church. I need to ask God to help me grow up. I need to stop repeatedly asking him to do something I believe would actually contradict his character and plan for saving people.

While I “faithfully” prayed for my sister’s salvation, I treated her like crap. ( I think I also prayed imprecatory prayers on her poor boyfriend: “Wreck that dirtbag, God! Make him hurt!”) When she and her boyfriend wanted to visit me, I said no. She ought to feel my disapproval, I thought. When she drifted even further from Jesus, I prayed even harder. “Please, please save her.” And then all of this dawned on me….

Maybe God answered my request to “show her the way” by putting me in her life.

“You’re supposed to show her who I am, to be my accurate witness, Ben,” he said. “What exactly are you telling her? That you would prefer to sit alone and keep hurling ignorant requests at me rather than love her as a friend and sister?” Whether I intended to or not, I had been telling her and her boyfriend that Jesus was a far-removed jerk who was annoyed by their questions and needed them to clean up before approaching him. If we need to get cleaned up before approaching Jesus, though, then we’re all in big trouble.

It felt so good, so empowering, to believe I could alter the very character and plan of God. And to vomit nonsense at God over and over was simply effortless. Learning to love, however, to shed pride and to seriously trust God was much more difficult – that was tough.

I finally quit the white-knuckled pleading for her salvation, and when I finally said, “My doors are open; welcome to my home and my life,” my sister and her boyfriend saw a more accurate witness of Jesus. They started to see that Jesus intended to know and love them, imperfections and all. They tasted in some small but real way the life Jesus offers. Now, they are both loving Jesus and seriously committed to learning about his Word.

The Apostles and Disciples seem to accept the fact that God’s plan for salvation is his own. They do not ask him to alter his sovereign decisions regarding the salvation of lost, nor do they suggest he ought to trample free will. It looks like they try to avoid such ill-conceived and contradictory assumptions. But as they write about loving and ministering to those who have not encountered the Gospel, they do seem to be praying for the growth and maturity of Christians in Jesus’ Church.

I needed to exchange wasted-breath pleas, however earnest, for useful requests. Carefully self-reflecting, now, I’m wondering if my life accurately depicts a Savior who loves Christians, who loves the Church, who cares deeply about all human life, who respects authority and who craves justice. As those inaccuracies surface, I spend time purposefully asking God to help me become a disciplined, effective, mature Christian who loves Jesus so that friends, family and everyone else around me might encounter an accurate witness of the Gospel. Unless I’m totally crazy, this seems like a wiser use of the limited breaths I’ve been given.

One of my convictions is that God has not called Imago Dei to be the church in Southeast Asia, he’s called the church in Southeast Asia to be the church in Southeast Asia. He’s called us to be the church in Portland, but when we work overseas it is significant that we partner with God’s people, like Abraham, in that place. National leaders know the language, culture and context where God has placed them and have Christ-centered vision for the presence of the gospel in their communities.

When we bypass national leaders and the local church we can waste a lot of time, energy and resources. For example: it would be weird if someone from Zimbabwe were to come to Portland and say: “we are going to start a new church here in Portland.” I would probably ask: “will you be moving here? learning the language? knowing our local culture? will you be coming underneath / alongside those of us who have been here for awhile to learn from us?” It would be really strange if they were to answer: “No. We will simply come twice a year on 2-week trips where we will hire translators, do outreach events, then go back home.”

We would think they were ridiculous. “How meaningful can your actions be when you don’t actually know the place?  If something good does happen while you’re here where is the ongoing presence for discipleship and local sustainability?” Yet I have often encountered where we in America are attempting to be the presence of Jesus overseas from a distance while bypassing national leaders and the local church and a priority on their localized contextual vision.

I’m grateful for Pastor Abraham and the many other national leaders God has blessed us with as partners over the years. They are our priority if we are to have effective involvement in kingdom proclamation / presence overseas, for they are the ones God has called and placed there to bear witness to His kingdom reign.

In the upcoming year, we will be partnering with Abraham’s church and ministry on initiatives in the areas of education, preventative health, clean water, sanitation and more. More on this in months to come. We likewise have a December 2010 trip (arts) and a March / April 2011 trip (medical) planned to go serve alongside Abe & our brothers and sisters overseas and see what God is doing firsthand there. Let me know if you’re interested in more info! (josh@imagodeicommunity.com)

Healing:  From the verb “to heal” – To make sound or whole, to restore to health, to overcome adverse circumstances, to be restored to original integrity.

The desire for healing is universal; it’s a defining feature of our humanity, to desire wholeness. Without brokenness, this concept, “Healing”, would never have existed. It would have been unnecessary, in fact, unfathomable. Similarly, without suffering, I would suggest, we would not really understand compassion.

When I started medical school, my idea was that by becoming a doctor I would experience satisfaction through making the world a better place. I also had this underlying concern that somehow God didn’t quite have the situation under control, or things would clearly be going differently than they were. Something happened along the way that I didn’t expect. I was stretched beyond my limits, to the point where I would fall asleep talking to my parents on the phone, but it wasn’t enough – there was always more, so my human energy was inadequate. I discovered that sometimes people would continue doing things that were harmful to themselves even when they received good advice. I found I couldn’t always make it better, even with a lot of knowledge and skill, and concluded that there was a gap between what will ever be humanly possible and our ideal of wholeness. I found myself as a doctor completely inadequate when everything medical had been done to no avail, to mend the wounds of grief and loss. So the magic required to “make it all better” had not passed into my possession. Through all of this, I came to suspect the possibility that Christ might have a different agenda than “making it all better” in the simple way I’d like to see.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was talking to a patient years after a car accident that dealt severe damage to the left side of her face. She has multiple scars, and her ear is permanently misshapen. Yet she is fully functional. She doesn’t look “normal’, she doesn’t look the way she did before the accident…Is she healed? What is our expectation of what it means to be healed? Is it possible that things won’t be the same after as before?

I also looked on Google Images under the word Healing. I got 22,300,000 pictures, and I looked through them all, and a lot of them showed hands – hands receiving light, lifted up, or the laying on of hands. Now, I think that’s a powerful symbol that says something about healing. Why does this symbol speak so universally? Is healing a relational event? What is communicated in the laying on of hands for healing?

I met a man on a medical mission in Indonesia. I’m not sure it’s accurate to say I met him actually, because he was unconcious. He had fallen out of a tree days before. His body showed the marks of “cupping”, a traditional healing practice where heated cups are laid on the body to suck the illness out. Eventually, his family had brought him to the hospital, his internal injuries already advanced. I think this illustrates some interesting questions about things that get in the way between us and healing- Do we have preconceptions about healing that perhaps get in the way? In expecting one thing, do we miss another opportunity? What else comes between us and being healed? In our search for healing, do we run up against our own sin, another’s sin, or perhaps the greater darkness of the world?

Is healing a painful road, sometimes a road we would prefer not to take? My high school friend was hit by a car, and day by day, had her thigh bone lengthened a millimeter at a time – that was excruciatingly painful. What is the cost of being healed, and does it sometimes require more courage than we seem to have?

Is it possible to experience healing after our hopes are disappointed? Another friend is grieving today, a year after his beautiful wife passed away from breast cancer shortly before her 40th birthday. He still can’t sleep, he experiences tremendous back pain, and his children are having nightmares. Is it safe to conclude that he and his family have been forgotten? How long do we wait – how long does healing take?

Who is more whole – the woman in my office who is about to have a healthy baby, and is so angry, she hates everyone she meets, or my friend who is confined to a wheelchair since her 20’s with Friedrich’s ataxia, already on medication for a failing heart, and is able to share her sorrows with her Creator, able to have friends and to love people, and has hopes for the future here and for a new life in heaven? If we were truly well and at peace in our souls, would our physical infirmities matter a little bit less?

When I think about Christ’s healing, I love the story of the woman who needed a good gynecologist. Let’s look at the story of the woman with the hemorrhage…Mark 5:25-34.

“And a woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse, after hearing about Jesus, came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak. For she thought, “If I just touch his garments, I shall get well.” And immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. And immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My garments?” And His disciples said to Him, “You see the multitude pressing in on You , and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’” And He looked around to see the woman who had done this. But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him, and told Him the whole truth. And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.”

This woman had plenty of pain and shame. I think she probably had fibroid tumors, enlarging her uterus, causing pressure, pain, and endless bleeding. She was probably so anemic, she was always exhausted. She couldn’t stop bleeding, so she was always unclean. She stank, she couldn’t go far from home, she tried everything and spent all her money and only got worse. She made contact with Christ, that physical healing contact, but that wasn’t enough for Him. He went back and found her. She came to him trembling – what had she done? Touching the Master when she was in fact unclean? But He spoke to her with kindess, he called her Daughter, and he offered a benediction over the healing she had experienced.

My home community has been studying Mark, and we looked at this and other miracles of healing that Christ performed. Each one is unique; he has different words for some, he touches others, sometimes he spits or makes mud – but he always approaches each person individually, no assembly line, impersonal, healing for the sake of quickly making it better. What does Christ’s ministry to this woman and to individuals tell us about what healing means to Him? What does Christ want us to experience of Himself, to know about Him in the process of being healing? Or does our experience of suffering and compassion actually bring us into relationship in a way that wouldn’t be possible otherwise?

These are some old and new thoughts from my journey as one who would be part of Christ’s healing work.

Some questions to consider:

*What pictures come to mind when you think of healing or being
healed?

*Thinking as the woman with the hemorrhage, how do you imagine
yourself feeling as Christ turned to ask who touched him?  How
might those feelings change or shift as you spoke with him?

*Do you know someone for whom healing came at an unexpected
time or in an unexpected way?

*What are some common barriers/derailments/roadblocks to healing?
What gets in the way of healing?

All through scripture, God seems to see names and naming as *prescriptive* rather than *descriptive,* meaning he names someone in order that they can grow into who he sees them to be.  Abram’s name is changed to Abraham because he *will be* the father of many; Simon becomes Peter because Jesus knows his own future as the *rock* upon which the church will be built.  Jesus renames him *so that* he can become someone new.  The names God gives us are his own blessing, his promise, his hope, and ours.

Naming *often* comes in trouble, in pain.  It is easy to allow painful experiences to name us, to curse us with a constricted name that turns us toward death in our spirit.  Yet God offers to brand our names on us, our blessings or promises, on the ruptured, wounded, flesh of our spirits.

There is healing in this blessing, if we will accept our name from God.

Jamie shared this from her personal journal:

What can I say today.  I am so deep down sad today.  This morning in church, a 92 year old former architect and former women’s dean at Multnomah, urged us to “hang in” and “hang on” to Jesus during difficult times in our faith.  And she walked us through the stages of vine cultivation to show how our lives progress through difficult time along the way to producing so much fruit.  She said that absolute hardest time, harder than temptation or loneliness or feeling “tied down” is when we tear ourselves down, saying we’re not good enough, or that “God loves us generically, because he has to, not because of who we are.”  Really, deep down, we think we are too disgusting to love, even for God.  And it was this word, “disgusting” that brought tears that I couldn’t stop, all the way through the rest of the service, the communion, the closing song.  That’s what my mom called me in that horrible phone conversation.  Disgusting.  No longer recognizable to her.  So disgusting that she didn’t want to be part of my life anymore.  And I realized, as I heard this woman saying our deepest fears and self-flagellations about our unloveliness that that’s exactly how I am feeling, how I feel resigned to feeling.  Alone, unwanted, and so totally unlovable.  So resigned that I didn’t realize how much it was hurting, and how much I had decided to absorb these words into the truth I hold about myself.  I took those words in and they became truth.  I’ve been trying to tell myself that these are the words of someone who is not well, that they reveal so much more about her own problems than they do about any reality about me, but I can’t seem to hold on to that.  The only thing I kept thinking is that she is my mother, and she, seemingly by magic or destiny or biology, has the power to name me, a powerful power.  You are disgusting.  And so I am.  You are unwanted.  And so I am.  I realized today that I am still a mash inside, so completely crumpled up and then trying to live and give out of this mashed up self.  So what can I do?  I can try to discern God’s truth about me, cling to it, and repeat it often, in order to live it out, to live from the truth of it.  God loves me just the way I am.  I am lovely.  And so I am.  I am worth knowing and loving.  And so I am.  I am wanted.  And so I am.  Please God, help me to believe.