What Else is Here?

What else is here? This is the question I’ve been asking as a spiritual practice during a very trying time. It’s a simple one, with transformational implications.

I’ve been living under plenty of stress during the last few weeks. Life has felt hard: Pain, sadness, loss, grief, regret, and fear, for starters. My face has carved a couple of new ridges and my body has felt heavy.

The choice has been to sink into despair or to believe that God is with me. If God is truly with me, then I can drink from the fountain of strength and hope. But how does one take a drink without reaching for the vase? Faith. And how does one believe, exactly? We can’t make ourselves trust. Fabricating or pretending does not take us very far. 

So this is what I’ve been doing. In lieu of practicing faith, which is fickle, I’ve been practicing using my imagination. Wait, don’t stop reading, I know it can sound cuckoo, but hear me out. Imagination is a gift from God. It is, in fact, the image of God in us. No one is more imaginative than God! We all come into this world with great access to our imagination but unless we cultivate it, we lose it as we grow older. But if God is invisible and the heavenly places are invisible and our spirits are invisible, it seems to me that imagination can help us a whole lot!

I’ve been imagining Jesus. I ask Jesus to take a walk with me, and I imagine him doing so. I invite him to sit with me as I eat, and to lay with me in my sleepless nights. Painful times can be very lonely times, because nobody lives in our skin and nobody can truly share our pain. Except Jesus. 

With Jesus near me, I ask: What else is here? I got this idea from my friends and teachers, Lacy Borgo and Trevor Hudson. What grace is here? What joy is here? What life is here? In other words, What am I missing? 

This morning I had plenty of stored up energy, which revealed I was feeling angry. I got on my walking pad and was going strong to the point of sweating. I asked Jesus to come and walk by me. I imagined him holding my hand when I asked, What else is here? And just like that, I remembered the graces. I’ve been so absorbed by the painful circumstances that I have not truly felt joy for the things that are going well in my life and in the lives of those whom I love. I realized how much is actually happening that is good, very good. It’s not that I didn’t know that before, but to know and to feel are not the same, to acknowledge and to live are quite far from each other. 

Heaven holds the sweet and the sour in the same dish. What a tragedy it is to miss the joy when in sorrow or to miss the sorrow when in joy. 

What is missing from our perspective today? Invite Jesus into your mundane and ask, What else is here? Don’t be surprised if the answer uncovers exactly what you need to see.