The criticism comes early in the day, burning.
Apparently, I had botched it. Muddled it all. Truth for the speaker, a genuine experience that I needed to hear, attend to. Still, the words singed this heart.
I let the words raze through the layers, smolder for hours, pieces of me blowing away, papery ash. It’s long and painful, this replay of searing words. The words keep reverberating, endlessly stoking the fire.
Yet in His grace, He stirs me too, gives me eyes to see. Yes, the flame of criticism scorches the wooden frame of me, true. I grieve that I am not hard, indestructible stone refusing to be charred.
But if I look closely, touch this wood on fire, I see the grain, still wet, sizzling with water. The heat of the judgment draws out wood’s water.
I cup hands close and the water drips, pools, into the hollow of me. I am soothed with its wet. This, the simple act of taking the blistering words as the cup that He gives. Taking the words as water meant to be collected, brought to lips, drank. I let reproach’s fire wring out water and give thanks with a whispered prayer:
"Thank you. I give thanks too for this criticism, food You give to nourish soul humility.”
If I truly believe myself to be unworthy, should I not also want others to have a realistic perception of who I am too?
Why be wounded, discouraged, when others find the efforts of these hands, this life, to fall short? For it’s true. I do fall short. It’s the essence of who I am. It’s why I cling to wood that won’t burn, wood surging up from the core of the universe, the Wood of Calvary.
“You would be a hypocrite to think lowly of yourself, but then expect others to think highly of you,” wrote the theologian and chaplain Jeremy Taylor over three hundred years ago. “Remember, no one can undervalue you if you know that you are unworthy. Once you know that, no amount of contempt from another person will be able to hurt.”
It does not hurt water to flow to the lowest places. It’s what water does. Always seeking, searching, hunting for ways to go lower, to trickle further downward. We live parched, thirsty. But we will not find drink for our soul on the heights, on the peaks. For the water’s running down, calling us to come too. To take His cup, to be quenched, we too must go lower and lower.
I am learning to live the Eucharist, to give thanks not only for that which delights, but for that which hurts… and finding it joy too.
Lord, the Refiner's Fire burns the water out of this wood. Will I drink the cup You give? O, let me flow low.
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