Over the last week or so, I have noticed a song on the radio that keeps tickling at something inside me. It is somewhat haunting, and I hear in it a note of lament tinged with hope. As I rode into work this morning with the UMC General Conference on my mind, I heard it again and knew that I would need to reflect further.
The song is "In My Blood" by Shawn Mendes. In this song, the artist has tried to put into words his own struggles with anxiety. You can hear the pain as he names the many ways that this anxiety manifests itself. And in the midst of the past three days in the life of my beloved denomination, I know that I have been feeling that pain, too. Feeling overwhelmed. Feeling insecure. Feeling anguish. Feeling heart ache. Thinking I am numb to the pain until the next round of words are spoken as if we are talking about a table that is not quite in the right spot rather than real, live human beings who are attempting to live into that same love of God as the rest of us.
"Help me, it's like the walls are caving in!"
As I have scrolled through my phone, listened to debates and points of order and speeches for and against. As I have felt alone and isolated and unable to breathe, wishing to hold onto those that I know are hurting even more than I.
I have felt defeated and beaten. I feel like giving up. Even knowing that my privilege means I am not even feeling the fullness of the pain that others are suffering.
And then that refrain comes along.
"But I just can't / It isn't in my blood."
That is the line that keeps tugging at me, that I keep feeling and coming back to. I want to give up, but it isn't in my blood to do that.
Or, perhaps I should say, it isn't in the blood that has claimed me.
As long as I am relying on myself, as long as I am looking to something created by people for salvation, I will fail every time. But I am claimed by the love of someone far greater. I am claimed by the love of God, and nothing - No Thing - can separate any of us from that love.
It is that blood that unites us, that connects us to one another and makes us whole.
It is that blood that will not let me give up - on myself, on my church, on my brothers and sisters and those that exist outside of that gender binary.
It is that blood that leads us into ministry to others.
It is that blood that calls on us to love one another.
That blood cannot be defeated.
I may hurt and I may mourn. But I know that God's love always has the last word.
I can't give up. It isn't in my blood.
That doesn't make it not hurt today, but Sunday comes...