One Week Left to Mourn

Sheaves of grain would be opened up and the stalks spread across the threshing floor. Pairs ofdonkeys or oxen (or sometimes cattle, or horses) would then be walked round and round, often dragging a heavy threshing board behind them, to tear the ears of grain from the stalks, and loosen the grain itself from the husks.

After this threshing process, the broken stalks and grain were collected and then thrown up into the air with a wooden fork-like tool called a winnowing fan. The chaff would be blown away by the wind; the short torn straw would fall some distance away; while the heavier grain would fall at the winnower's feet. The grain could then be further cleansed by sieving.- Wikipedia.org

I have been thinking about the threshing floor all week, ever since I re-read the chapter in Mended referring to this subject. A scripture caught my eye this time around, so I looked it up.  In Genesis 50, Joseph is traveling home to bury his father and he has a large entourage with him, including Egyptian dignitaries. They stop at the threshing floor and there they mourn dramatically for 7 days. When the week is over, so is the period of mourning.

In the novel, "Jesus Wept", a fictional account of Lazarus, the Thoenes describe a period of mourning for a loved one in Jewish culture as a set time and then its over. 

As I pondered both of these scenarios, I felt as though God were speaking to my own heart about a hidden grief. My heart was broken over the past six months for my girls and grief can hide deep. I sensed Holy Spirit moving inside me as I read about the threshing floor, a place of brokeness, separation,yet harvest.

When David purchased the threshing floor in 2 Samuel 24, it later became the site where God's temple would be built.

How do you move out of the breaking season into the rebuilding? I have wanted to post all week about this but felt and still feel my thoughts  are ambiguous. Yet in my spirit, I have sensed that God is doing something, moving me, perhaps even healing me. It is His work, one that flesh and blood is unable to perform.

I am beginning to believe that a part of healing  is accepting the broken pieces of me as a part of who I am, a part of my whole. Stop striving to be something else. Letting go of my ideals, time tables and perfectionism.

I love what Elizabeth Lesser has to say about the process of brokeness. 

"I have noticed that the most generous and vital people are those who have been broken open by change, or loss, or adversity. And not just broken open on the outside. Indeed, it is the internal transformation that matters most. If there is one thing that has made a difference in my life, it is the courage to turn and face what wants to change within me."

"What wants to change within me."

What wants to change within me? What wants to change within you?

I have done nothing these past seven days since first reading about the threshing floor to mend myself, but God has been slowly mending.