This phrase, living in skin, has been mulling around in my head for several days. It’s a concept Jonathan Hartgrove-Wilson is teasing apart in Reconstructing the Gospel. He is beginning to show how uncomfortable white American Christians are in their own skin. And how this is in stark contrast to the African American culture that he is learning from on his journey of faith.

This severing of body from soul opens the door to a lot of brutality and oppression, from the church justifying slavery itself to the present day sexual abuse that’s rampant and defended in many American churches. I guess anytime there’s abuse against another person’s body there is a severing of body from soul, whether it’s justified by religion or not. But I do find it especially disturbing when Christians dismiss abuse against another soul. Because you can not separate them, body and soul.

I think Jesus is very clear on this, based on how he spent his time. I know he taught, but I get the picture that he might have lost more sleep healing people’s bodies than he did preaching to them. I have no interest in ranking, only in looking at why I have so much trouble with this detachment from body when Jesus clearly cared so much about them. I think Jesus knows that we are one, body and soul, so a felt need in the body is a felt need in the soul. Those who are hurting know they need healing.

This to me explains this disparity between my priveleged white culture and the cultures of the oppressed in our nation. Those of us on top are not only numb to our own felt need, but to the pain of those we oppress to protect our comfort.

Twelve years ago Chris and I visited a dump in Managua, Nicaragua. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were living on a burning trash heap, and we took them a little bit of food one day. It struck me to my core that this degree of poverty is the spirtitual reality of every soul before God. But when we are surrounded by luxury and our primary concern is our own comfort, it’s hard to see it.

This whole idea has got me examining my own life, and how detached I can be from the world I live in, and my own body. I’ve long had a growing desire to learn from the passion I see in African American music, and I believe this whole idea of living in my own skin is striking those chords, showing me what I’m missing. A few weeks ago when I went for a walk down by the river well before it was light out I prided myself on having no fear of what men could do to me. And my husband called it out as an eerie detachment from this world.

Last night we had a new friend come and join us at game night upstairs with the Coffeys. He was sharing some traumatic experiences they had been through with their youngest son and his severe food allergies. I felt a small tinge of his pain, but afterward I was so saddended by my actual response. I shared how we had been through a lot of hardship with our boys’ bodies when they were younger, but they’d outgrown it and I’d learned to roll with it. I felt like I needed to minimize my hardship in light of theirs, but I also was sadly detaching myself from one of the greatest growing experiences of my life.

The truth is that physical pain in my children’s bodies grew my prayer life like nothing else can. All those nights I held a baby screaming in pain, crying out for mercy, mercy. And then getting to see it, and even expect it. I have seen God heal so many little and big things in our bodies. I believe He delights to, and loves when we ask. In many ways this has made my faith tangible and real like no discussion ever could. So you see how sad I was to have dismissed this so quickly, when it’s not a felt need right now.

Sunday after the message someone asked how to help someone who is uncertain in their faith. Chris said afterwards he would say that confidence comes with need. I have felt this in my body.

This morning the older boys went back to school after the holidays, so I took Twill to the park for awhile. I just followed him around to see what he’d do. All the while I was thinking about how good he is at living in his own skin. How every inch of him squirms at a swarming ant mound. How he sees terraced stairs from across the park and has to climb them. How he will seek out shady grass to mow with his stick, because leaves and wood chips are not grass, and he doesn’t like the hot sun beating down on him.

There’s a verse that talks about women being saved through childbearing that I’ve pondered a lot this decade of motherhood. For years I have seen it as a matter of purification, because motherhood is so humbling and draws out depths of evil deep within me. But today I saw it more as a gift. I was saved somewhat today from my own self-importance by the chance to learn from Twill what it looks like to live fully present to this world, in our skin.

With all this, I do believe there is a tension we are called to hang on to. We anticipate Jesus’ return when all the pain and suffering in this world will be relieved, and yet we do everything we can to relieve all that we can until then. That’s what Jesus did. He didn’t just say, “Bless you, it will all be made right someday.” He attended to felt needs. I think, just like in Jesus’ time, the church of the priveleged desperately needs lessons from the oppressed about need.

Twill has also shown me how this hope that we have is bodily too. When we read the storybook bible he will point to Jesus and say, “He’s inside me.” And I say, “Amen, brother, you know it!” It’s been a concept he has grappled with quite a bit at 2 and 3 years old. Many times he has looked down his shirt, looking for Jesus. “Where is he again?” he’ll ask. “In your heart,” I say, like a dull adult. But he needs to know where, literally. So I touch his chest. “In my belly?” he says. And we laugh. I love how much he needs to know.

This is ultimately my hope, that Jesus has given me his Spirit, in my physical body, and a promise that I will get to be with him, physically, one day. I long to see Jesus face to face, body to body. This is why my favorite movie is The Shack, because it put real skin on my Savior. But recently all the need for justice around me is helping me not wish this life away. I want to be part of what God is doing here and now, to experience life in Him here, in this body. I have much to learn about it and I know I need help from those who know they need him.