Monday Morning Musing: Hearts that Limp

I have a habit of jotting down phrases or quotes or random thoughts in a notebook I try to carry with me. I sometimes put them in my phone, too, but I like the physical act of pen to paper. The problem can be that if I've hastily scribbled them and not adequately provided context, I can't properly give credit when I share them. Which is where I am this morning.

I wrote this quote from an article I recently read about grief: "Allow yourself to walk with a limp in your heart." I'm sorry to say that I don't know the author nor can I find the article. Still, walking with a limp in our hearts seems exactly right for these days.

We are still collectively limping along post pandemic: post lockdown, post waking up every morning to check hospitalization and death rates and post find our county on the map to see how COVID is trending in our area that week. We are post cloth masks don't work, you need KN95's out there in the world. We are post weighing whether to risk going to health appointments or to visit those who need us. Our hearts have no choice but to limp along in a world where so many died, some with only the courageous nurse on the floor at their sides.

Our hearts limp for other reasons too. For all that keeps us up at night and for all that seems bigger in the night watches than in the light of day. (Kate Bowler calls this the 2am vs 2pm way of seeing things). And they limp for reasons that are deeply ours alone. For the things we have done and left undone; for the people who were supposed to love us unconditionally but, turns out, there were in fact conditions on their love; for the dreams deferred so long they have died; for the unimaginable phone call or news or diagnosis. Our hearts limp, dear ones.

But the quote invites us to allow ourselves to walk with that limp in our hearts. To stay in the world, to walk with our pain on the days we can and to lie down on the couch with it on the days we need to. To offer ourselves tea and sweet bread and a novel or Netflix some days and to put on our kick ass clothes and go do the things on others.

The Psalmist/s, in their brokenness walked with a limp in their hearts. If there is a portion of Scripture filled with limping, it is the Psalms. So, for this morning, I offer a verse that I keep tucked close at hand, and a short poem by the remarkable Mary Oliver:

The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

-Psalm 34: 18

The Uses of Sorrow

Someone I loved once

gave me a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand that

this, too, was a gift.