Marilu Thomas, “Out of Touch”
How old are you in your head? Jennifer Senior posed the question to her mother who, without taking a breath said, 45. Her mother is 76. Jennifer is 53 but is 36 in her head. She wondered, “Why do so many people have an immediate, intuitive grasp of this highly abstract concept- ‘subjective age’ it’s called- when randomly presented with it? It’s bizarre if you think about it. Certainly, most of us don’t believe ourselves to be shorter or taller than we actually are…Most of us also know where our bodies are in space, what physiologists call “proprioception.’ Yet we seem to have an awfully rough go of locating ourselves in time.” Ask yourself the question. How old are you in your head?
Of course, as you probably guessed, there are studies about this. Adults over 40 perceive themselves to be on average about 20 percent younger than their actual age. I am 65 but, in my head, I am 54. I think this may be because that was the year we moved to Virginia, and it felt like an adventure. My husband and I were both physically fit and had always wanted to move back to Charlottesville. A humbling side note from social scientist Ian Leslie is that “30-year-olds should be aware that for better or worse, the 50-year-old they are talking to thinks they’re roughly the same age.” So, if you’re older, you may be thinking while talking with a 30-something, “We have the same hipster vibe!” but the 30-year-old is thinking, “I can’t believe I’m talking to someone my parents’ age!” illustrating how we can be very out of touch with how we are experienced by other people. This is the essence of good therapy—to help us understand how others experience us.
This idea is on full display in the show “Shrinking” about three therapists who have personal issues. Watching Jimmy, Gaby, and Paul, tell their clients what to do while dealing with the wreck of their own lives is comforting and heartwarming. In the face of knowing what they should do, we get to see them as they are. Paul, the cranky old man played by Harrison Ford, has been living far away from his daughter Meg since her childhood. He desperately wants her back in his life but when she visits, he messes it up and they are estranged again. Jimmy is trying to make up with his teenage daughter Alice for his emotional absence but has no clue how to do it, so his neighbors and friends must step in. Gaby is newly divorced from an alcoholic and fuming that he is doing better than when they were together. They are grieving and acting out and people are reacting to them. The show is about how they help each other understand each other. This is the epitome of Romans 7:15 where St. Paul confesses, “I do not understand my own actions.”
Do you have a relationship that confounds you? You want it to be different but believe that the other person must change before you can be happy. Is there a broken relationship that you want to have back or at least make less awkward? Are you the one who cut off the relationship or are you cut off? Are drugs, alcohol, mental illness, or trauma deep-sixing your or a loved ones’ relational future? Physical illness can also interrupt or warp a beloved relationship. Or maybe it’s less clear what the issue could be, but it hurts. For all intents and purposes, the way it was is gone and you can’t see a way forward. Or maybe you have a hard time having a trusting, reciprocal relationship with anybody. Yes- there are behaviors that are criminal or threatening and should be avoided, but excluding those, we all have somebody on our relational to-do list.
The problem with relationships is--- humans. People are the problem- you and me. We are human and can’t see beyond our own emotional horizon to the needs of others. We are fallible, self-focused, and not mind readers or all-powerful. We make mistakes and prepared for the past not this moment. The refrain in my head is Taylor Swift’s “Hi, it’s me. The problem is me.” I don’t get there very often—because I think the problem is you most of the time. I mean just look at how you act! But when the lens gets turned on me just long enough, I see that I do the same things I accuse the collective you of doing.
Ezekiel was in the same boat. God had given him a relational task—to tell the people of Israel that they were on God’s to-do list. The hand of God grabs the prophet and drops him in a valley filled with dry bones. He had lost hope that the people were paying attention to the message to repent. Margaret Odell writes, “Ezekiel sees little evidence that Judeans will choose more wisely in the future than they have in the past. Though blessed with moral agency, they are no more able to use this faculty well than lifeless bones are able to get up and walk.” The people are crying out, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”
But it was never about Ezekiel’s prophetic powers. God tells him to put the bones together but then there is no life in them. Have you ever done that in a relationship? Forced it back together but there is no life in it? The Almighty commands Ezekiel to tell the bones, “Watch this: I’m bringing the breath of life to you…You’ll come to life and realize that I am God.” Hidden within this valley of bones is a promise—the dead will live. God resurrects the faith of the people through the gift of breath of the Spirit, God’s power not the prophet’s. Where he expected judgment, “Ezekiel discovers divine grace instead. This grace initiated the whole human enterprise by making humans from dust and breathing into them the breath, ruah, of life (Genesis 2:7).” (Odell). Without the breath of God, you are lifeless. In Acts 17:28 says, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” The Spirit of Christ Jesus, breathed into you by God, will never leave you or forsake you. Dry bones and dry relationships can live in His hands.
Twenty-five chapters earlier in the book of Ezekiel, God made another promise. “I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” (Ezekiel 11:19-20) Nothing is said in the promise about earning or deserving or worthiness. The Spirit is a gift to those with hearts of stone who need to have hearts to trust God. All of us qualify.
Like the bones, you and the person you are in relationship with are unable to help yourselves have life. This is an inside job. But God is in the bones—deep in the bones of each and every person, working out His plan of salvation for everyone, including you. Something will happen in that will change the relationship for the better, but you will not be able to predict it nor make it happen. You can hold onto the promise of God and trust that Jesus Christ is at work on the human plane out of your ability to see or sense.
Our Valleys of Dry Bones are as full of promise for us as they were for Ezekiel and the people of Israel because of the gift of the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ. This text is placed on the last Sunday of Lent as Jesus Christ is on the way to the Cross to die to make all things live. Death for life. The same Holy Spirit who freed Christ from death and the grave gives us life and breath. All will be redeemed and resurrected, even the hardest of relationships, which maybe be with God. What then? Christ’s Spirit is at work in your field of trust and faith bones at this very moment, breathing life where there was none, bringing wholeness and truth. Christ says to you as God said to Ezekiel, “I’ll breathe my life into you, and you will live.” He will resurrect your faith in the love of God and your bones will sing. You will trust God again.
Can these bones live? Yes—they can.
Blessed are You Lord who gives life to the dead.
Amen.
