A Beloved Man

There is something new in my therapy tool box. It is called project therapy. I would define it as working on a major project that employs a lot of the things that need work. Things like writing, words, working memory, language issues, and executive function.  All wrapped up as a project of some sort. 

Just this week I heard about it in a documentary about aphasia. The documentary was a “project” that a man named Coleman Watson did as therapy. One of the people he interviewed was his therapist and they talked about his “project”. That is how the idea of project therapy came to me.  While it is a new idea for me, I recognized that I am doing that. In fact, it is exactly what I have been doing for the last year as I worked on my Blog.

My Blog has been an interesting adventure.  When I started it, I thought it would be a good way to chronicle my journey through a stroke. But for me anyways, it has become more than just a place to record what happened. It has become an integral part of my therapy. It has become a way to process my thoughts. More importantly, I think it is a way that God talks to me. With words. Words that I had already written.  

For example, I can remember when I wrote this in the “About” section of my blog.  “I am a man who is loved by God”. The reason I can remember it was because it seemed wrong to say that.  I struggled with it. I wanted to change it to I am a man who loves God. But for some reason, I couldn’t. “I am a man who is loved by God,” stayed.

Why did it feel wrong? Because I felt unlovable, I felt unworthy, I felt like I was putting words in his mouth. How can I say that God loves me? I know that God loves everyone, I get that, that to say that God loves me. I mean, me. In a distinct way. Not in the abstract “God loves everyone” kind of way, but yeah, it felt wrong to me to say it.

Well, I think I got it backwards. I wasn’t putting words in his mouth, he was putting those words in my mouth.  He wanted me to say, I am a man who is loved by God, actually more than that. He wanted me to not just say it, but to live in the reality of those words. He wants me to know I am a beloved man. 

Beloved. To be loved. 

Somehow God was working on me as I was working on my blog. With words that I had already written. Telling me over and over again that he loves me. Why can’t I grasp that; why is it so hard for me to say that I am a beloved man. Stripped bare of all pretense, all of the awards and accomplishments that the world bestows, all of the things that I “earned” while trying to win God’s favor, He says, “I love you .“ Set everything down and just sit there on my lap. And let me love you. 

I am reading a book by Brenner Manning called Abba’s child. There he recounted a spiritual retreat he had done. For 5 days, in silence, he focused on the gospel of John, and when things affected him, verses, thoughts, he would write them in a journal. The first thing wrote in his journal and the last thing he wrote in his journal was this: “the disciple Jesus loved was reclining next to Jesus…leaning back on Jesus’ breast”. What a powerful image. He goes on to say,

I believe that the night in the Upper Room was the defining moment of John’s life. Some sixty years  after Christ’s resurrection, the apostle–like an old gold miner panning the stream of his memories–recalled all that had transpired during his three-year association with Jesus.  He made pointed reference to that holy night when it all came together, and he affirmed his core identity with these words: ‘Peter turned and saw the disciple Jesus loved following them–the one who had leaned on his breast at the supper’ (John 21:20). 

If John were to be asked, ‘what is your primary identity, your most coherent sense of yourself?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist,’ but ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’¹

(If you’re wondering, project therapy for me includes working on footnotes. My first footnote since College. Whoo hoo! For those of you who are better at English than I, let me know if I got it right.)

Identity is often talked about in the community of those who had a brain injury.  Because, I think, we often equate our identity with what we can do, our careers, our gifts, our accomplishments. That is a big part of who we are. That often creates a crisis of identity when everything you thought you could do is gone.  Man it is hard for me when I think about the man I used to be.  I am trying to remake an identity with the pieces that remain.  I realize that is what I am doing.

But I am also starting to realize what God is doing. He is talking to me as I am working on my blog, he is talking to me as I sit there on my porch, he was talking to me back when my journey through a stroke started. There he invited me to sit there on his lap, to lean back on Jesus’ breast. It is hard for me to grasp it; it is hard for me to say it. But he is telling me, I am a beloved man.  I am the one Jesus loves. 

Can I look back someday, “like an old gold miner panning the stream of his memories” and remember that holy day when it all came together. That day when I recognized that I am a beloved man. When I sat there on his lap and laid my head against his breast and listened to his heartbeat. Could this be the defining moment of my life? Man, I don’t know. I hope so. Because I am not a contractor, I am not a man who had a stroke. I am the one Jesus loves.

1. Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 2015), 105. ↩︎