I often wonder about all the times we say we cannot express and think maybe we can and just don’t know how, because expressing looks like all the things we’re afraid of and uncomfortable with. Maybe expressing looks like crying and screaming and cursing and sitting alone and quiet and God forbid maybe even questioning.
The earth beneath our feet has shifted with the weight of this great grief and we are left to rediscover what we can hang onto and what we cannot; what is safe and enduring and what is faulty and frail. All the things we thought we knew, all the things we trusted in before are different now, shaped by the magnitude of loss and we are left to dare to trust new things.
“But I just can’t put it into words”—
So don’t put it into words. Put it in color, in sound, in sight, in dance, in art and any other thing that makes you feel alive or bold or connected or trusting.
Expression is a huge part of healing—it is healing. It is the shedding of the lies we’ve been told by society and church culture—lies about what it should look like, sound like, feel like. It is stepping into a bold new movement where we come to rest in God as our refuge; trusting the God who is fully immersed in our suffering as if it is his own. Expression is the art of letting go of where we think we should be and trusting God where we are. Expression is a movement of intimacy even though we feel far. Expression is so inherently restorative that we cannot afford to dismiss it. It is the anthem cry of our broken and wounded selves; the cry for new things in the deadness of time, the hope for light in the darkness of night. It is the thing that allows safety to once again take control of relationships, and it restores the sacredness of vulnerability.
Expression is a letter to ourselves and it is a letter to those around us—
You are okay. It is okay to grieve this, to feel this, to celebrate this. Rest where you are.
It is a gift from our Father, the Creator, the Great Expression, and it is through this gift that he is telling us—he knows, sees, hears, and cares. Expression is divine. It is healing. It is love.
Scope Ministries 