Do You Have What It Takes?

3/29/24

I was outside working several minutes ago (I often have time to write my blogs while at work so I’m really thankful for that). While the steady hum of some of the equipment droned in the background, the sun was cupping my face in its warmth, the breeze stroked through and caressed my skin and ran it’s fingers through my very un-coiffed hair. I was serenaded by the various and sundry wildlife and the scent of the fresh outdoors took my mind back to the more carefree days of my childhood. Then, I remembered, today is Good Friday and suddenly I felt more alive and loved.

Then my heart kinda got a little sad as I realized that this world is full of people dying to feel loved; in some cases they literally are dying. All one has to do is listen to their friends, collegues, family, neighbors or any other groups of people they know and they will hear the sadness and the loneliness. Sometimes all they have to do is look in a mirror. Sometimes you hear it their words but often you hear it in their quiet or in their isolation. Sometimes it’s as simple as how they persent themselves or even hold their head. Behind virtually EVERY suicide is loneliness of the deepest kind.  

More than once, in my younger years (and maybe not so younger years), I lived in that world. That world of wishing I could belong to that special someone. Of wishing I mattered. Of wishing I was seen or wanted. I NEEDED to be wanted. That place of where I sacrificed more than I should have, things I can never get back. Things like time with aging family. Time with my child. Time with the little girl in me that needed to be healed.

I know we all want to think or know that we matter to “that special someone”. That there would be that one person (other than our family) that would be willing to lay down their life for us and us for them. That one person that still wants us even when we mess up or don’t look our best. I firmly believe it’s something that most of us are born with.

*I’m going to step off on a side note here but be patient with me as I will tie it together in the end.

Remember when you were in school and basic instructions almost always included the phrase “make sure you check your answers” or in math “make sure you check your work”. This was supposed to help you remember to make sure all were answered but also look over your answers for accuracy. Sometimes it didn’t seem to matter what I did I just could NOT get the right nswer.

For those not familiar with Good Friday, it is a Christian holiday that is bittersweet. It is the day that our Messiah was brutally beaten and nailed to a rugged wooden cross. Let me explain this a little. Crucifixion was a humiliating form of torture and punishment utilized by the Romans. Your weight, which was held to the splintery wood by huge nails driven mercilessly and powerfully through your ankles and wrists, would hold you to the cross. The cause of death was suffocation and exhaustion. This was because your body, wracked with pain, lost its ability to support your weight. You had to choose between hang your weight off the nails in your wrists or forcing your weight onto the nail in your ankles just to be able to breathe. It usually took DAYS to die.

But see, That wasn’t all. Jesus was betrayed by a close friend, was taken prisoner, interrogated by the religious leaders, stripped and beaten by them, then beaten by the Romans with a cat o’ nine tails whip with shards of metal and pottery laced in the tails. These would act as hooks and barbs tearing flesh as the whip is drawn back  for the next lash. Open wounds, exposed nerves and jagged flessh forced to bear the weight of the cross

Now, I know what you are thinking, and I PROMISE you, the last thing I ever wanted the answer to be was Jesus. I tried so many things but the answer just never checked out no matter how awesome it sounded in my mind. It took me a few years to figure it out. What I do know is that a midst all the loneliness, suicides and people feeling unloved that each of these people were and are loved. Whoever you are, wherever you are, it does not matter what you’ve done, Jesus thinks you are to die for.