The past month or so has led me to reflect a great deal on the two natures of Christ.

It’s a theological concept and Church doctrine that I’ve always struggled to understand. How can Christ Jesus be both 100% human and 100% divine? How can the entirety of his self be two things simultaneously? The math never added up properly in my mind: somehow 1+1 = 1? And so I chocked it up as one of those mysteries of faith that I would never see my way through and would have to wait until I rest in God’s self to begin to grasp.

And then the month of November happened.

On the one hand, the events of my life in the past six weeks have brought an overabundance of blessings – so many that my sense of gratitude and joy has been almost too great to contain in my body. I am surprised that others – friends I meet or the strangers that I pass on the street – don’t pause to comment on the halo of happiness that must be radiating out of me.

In these weeks, I have completed a manuscript of my grandmother’s history of trauma and redemption and faith, a thing that has long been waiting, curled up, inside of me. I have been invited into and accepted a new call in a diocese that makes me feel treasured and valued. I am in the midst of uncovering another vocation of advocacy for Palestine, working with colleagues and friends to tell the stories of my people in and to the Church and beyond. A new season of our beloved Small Churches Big Impact podcast has dropped; it is rockin’ and it has meant I’ve spent a lot of time with the wonderful women I get to call my friends in the SCBI Collective.

On top of all of that, I have watched with pride and gratitude as all my children and my spouse have finally settled into their new lives in a new place. Just the other day, even Fred, whose transition has arguably been the most challenging, said “I’m really glad we moved to Austin.” In the six months since our move, I have already made good friendships that fill me up and nourish me, all while feeling well-supported and loved by those whose physical presence is now further away. I have gained the much-needed distance from the constant triggering of the trauma I experienced in Sewanee and can see and acknowledge the immense personal growth and fruits of the Spirit that that season – awful as it was – has gifted me. The words of Psalm 23 feel like an apt description of my life right now; the table is set before me with the most abundant feast and my cup is overflowing.

From the roots of the hairs on my head to the longest nail on my biggest toe, I am 100% full with gratitude and joy.

AND…

In the same six week period, I have watched with horror as Israel’s genocidal campaign against my people has intensified. While it was awful from the start, I think in the beginning, in that first month, I kept believing that it wouldn’t continue for too much longer. I kept believing that international pressure would make a difference, that America, surely, couldn’t support such a slaughter, that Israel might bomb the hell out of the north of Gaza but then stop. But by the time we crept into November, all of that naïve optimism disintegrated and the despair set in.

These days, everything I do, everything I say, everything I experience is buried in the context of the knowledge of the evil that is being violently carried out against an innocent people – against my innocent people. I cannot hug my children without thinking of the thousands Israel has killed and continues to kill, the hundreds of thousands Israel has traumatized and continues to traumatize. I cannot eat a morsel of food or drink a sip of (bubbly, store-bought, easily-accessible) water without imagining the suffering of the 1.5 million Gazans who don’t have such luxuries for survival. I cannot fill up my car with gas, meet my children when they get out of school, worship God on Sunday mornings, enjoy my kid playing soccer, take a shower, watch TV with my husband, lie down in my bed to sleep at night, without bringing to mind the violent brutality Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Jerusalem face at the hands of Israeli settlers, the IDF and the Israeli government right now, every minute, every moment of every day. I live my life, I do all these things with the stark awareness that Israel is murdering innocent Palestinians and my country and my Church are silent. It is a betrayal I cannot stomach. I feel paralyzed by my powerlessness.

And it makes me miserable. The sadness and frustration and anger are too much for my body to contain. I am surprised when others – friends that I meet, strangers I pass on the street – don’t pause to ask about the black tar of tragedy that must surely be oozing from the very pores of my skin.

From the roots of the hairs on my head to the longest nail on my biggest toe, I am 100% full with misery and sorrow.

There is no half-and-half here; there is no sharing of space or jostling of emotions within me as one takes up more of my self at one time and then moves over for the other to take priority. I live completely and wholly in anguish and simultaneously I am completely and wholly consumed by joy.

More times than I can count, I have found myself marveling at the miracle of the human capacity to hold these two things together, at my previously-unknown ability to not be torn apart by such tension and contrast. I wake up each morning, surprised that these two all-encompassing experiences are yet there, weirdly, wildly, layering themselves within me, each one of them filling me up wholly, and somehow I can still breathe. In the first moments of the day, with the darkness not yet dispersed, I do the math in my head: 1+1 = 1. And I think of the two natures of Christ in one incarnate body. And I cannot grasp it. But I begin to understand.