I felt the sun heat my skin today, for the first time in months. It was only for a minute or so, before I had to buckle my daughters into the van, but it was enough to remind me of that feeling you forget after a long winter.
It’s all encompassing and welcoming. It reminds me of a story my teacher read to us in elementary school. Upon some internet searching, I found that this was in fact one of Aesop’s Fables, titled, The North Wind and The Sun. I’ll give you a little summary, along with an excerpt that just couldn’t be summed up and still sound as good.
The North Wind and the Sun got into an argument over who was stronger. They decided to finally put their quarrel to the test and agreed that whomever could get the traveler, walking down the road, to remove his coat first, was the strongest. The North Wind tried several times, using large gusts to try to remove his coat, but the man just grasped his cloak closer to his body.
“Then the Sun began to shine. At first his beams were gentle, and in the pleasant warmth after the bitter cold of the North Wind, the Traveler unfastened his cloak and let it hang loosely from his shoulders. The Sun’s rays grew warmer and warmer. The man took off his cap and mopped his brow. At last he became so heated that he pulled off his cloak, and, to escape the blazing sunshine, threw himself down in the welcome shade of a tree by the roadside.”1
So, the Sun won. In my classroom, I’m sure my teacher gathered us around the moral that kindness works much better than forcefulness.
It’s a story, though, which holds a different meaning for me today. When I was in a good amount of pain from my bladder disease, I started to allow myself twenty minutes to an hour to just be and do and feel. Sometimes this meant writing, or reading, but the time that the sun reminded me of today, was when I would lay on the sunning chair on our back porch, on a cement slab which slants ever so slightly due to erosion, and place my hands on my exposed belly. (the neighbors have hopefully adjusted to the mom bikini. It’s just going to happen. I’m ok if they’re offended.)
I would close my eyes, place my hands on my lower abdomen and imagine my bladder healing. I would imagine the tell tale red lines of IC, slowly disappearing into a healthy pink tissue and I would picture the sun’s warmth as the catalyst.
I’m fairly sure the sun did not heal my bladder (although there is something to say about Vitamin D deficiency – perhaps in another post). But that feeling, of warmth and protection is something I think all of us searches for from the time we are born until the time we die.
We search for it in people, in adventures, in hobbies, and, as I found it today, in the weather. Sometimes we find it in those things. Sometimes those things satisfy it for a while too. But, more often than not, one season fades into the next. More often than not, another person can not hold an environment of safety for us forever, and we end up feeling cold, pulling our cloaks tighter to our chests, even tighter than before.
The North Wind can be present in so many different ways, but most often, when I think back, I have found it in words. This applies to the time of my disease, before, and after. This is something I think we can all recollect. A word that was said that made us pull tighter into ourselves, instead of relaxing into the warmth of security and love.
I remember hearing it as a girl, “You’re not actually one of our best friends.” Pulling that cloak a little tighter. Or that time I raised my hand during a discussion about the year 2000, which was just a few years off, and said “we’ll get to live in two millenniums” – to which my teacher replied, “That’s if Jesus doesn’t come first.” Pull that cloak tighter. Or when my favorite, male, high school teacher told me my shirt was too short. Or when the professor I admired and thought respected me, was really only working with girls he thought were pretty. Or when I was told I wasn’t handling my illness well. Or when I read the words of despair on “support forums”. Or when I shared that poem in college that everyone mocked. Pull tighter, pull tighter, pull tighter, pull tighter.
In the moments I just listed, they represent hurt in relationships and disappointment in people, but also in religion, which is really just people trying to talk about God in their own people ways. I think maybe many of us have learned that people aren’t safe, God isn’t safe, and we’re so wound up in our cloaks that we will never truly allow ourselves to live and become who we were created to be.
Friends, go outside and feel that sunshine on your skin today. Let it warm you enough to maybe just let the cloak hang off your shoulder a bit. I understand why you’re scared. I am too, more often than I would like to admit. It’s ok that we’re real with one another on that.
However, I did find some goodness in my year and a half of healing, that I carry with me today, and remind myself to return to on the cold, windy days.
What I found was safe and it was whole and it allowed me to start to bloom into the person hidden by fear. I can’t help but believe that the religion many of us grew up with trained us to pull our cloaks tighter. We were taught to keep those cloaks on – at least until marriage. Ok, sorry. I had to.
Anyway, there is this deep, warm, accepting love out there friends, and it took a disease for me to experience it in a way that I had tried to before, but had been convinced that believing differently than what had been taught a certain way for centuries meant that I couldn’t know a very real God.
We need to start creating communities of open acceptance and love so that our friends can take off their cloaks! I realize this analogy is starting to sound like an orgy, but bear with me. Let’s let our words and our faith and our relationships be warmth.
Find the things that tingle your skin with their heat. These are good things. They are life giving, love stirring things and sometimes we just need to feel safe enough to pursue them.
Be the people that offer so much acceptance (the opposite of condemnation) to the person in front of you, that their brow begins to sweat, and they have to take off their cap. That’s the kind of love we are called to create, and that’s the kind of love that we are offered. It’s warm and sweet and safe.
1 The North Wind and the Sun. (2018, April 10). Retrieved April 11, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_North_Wind_and_the_Sun