Shalom in the Middle Spaces
on turning forty-six, a gathering, a breath prayer, & a voice to follow
I woke up in a hotel room in Detroit on my birthday this year. There are a number of reasons why I would’ve never imagined this scenario for myself, but six days ago, there I was, waking early alongside of a thin layer of burnt orange sun glowing through my hotel window. I wondered:
Does the sun get lonely or ever tire of rising and setting?
I was in alone in a hotel room on my birthday because I was at a gathering as both a first-time attendee and as a speaker. I’ve been to a lot of gatherings— but this gathering was different.
This gathering was a place of welcome and wholeheartedness. Created for those of Asian ancestry and others who are connected to them, it was a space made for paying attention to our hearts, souls, and bodies – not merely our minds. There was so much room offered for personal stories, deep conversation, and prayerful reflection. Truly, I haven’t been to a gathering like it before. I’m holding many of the stories I heard and conversations I had, close in heart.
Our worship was led by Aisea Taimani of Minor Islands, and we worshipped through song and movement and breath. We learned how to sign a song that Aisea learned from attending deaf church with a CODA friend, and we also sang in English, Korean, and Aramaic. We sang a song from the Black church. We sang a Palestinian worship song and I cried as we sang — lamenting with others and realizing that this was the first time I’ve been offered a space of communal lament in this way. For months and months I’ve been lamenting current events alone, while holding it together in spaces that only offer room for cheerful communal praise. Don’t get me wrong - I love cheerful communal praise, but if it’s all we are ever invited to participate in when we gather, our collective worship will run the risk of being lopsided and dishonest. The dissonance can easily become barrier that keeps people from experiencing authentic intimacy with God.
How right, and good, and needed it is to imagine the realities of fellow image bearers near and far, and be with them in whatever ways we are able. This too, is worship.
As I waited to board my plane on my birthday, I felt sad to leave the gathering early, but so eager to get home to my family, and thankful for the gift of feeling both things.
I was home in time to celebrate another year around the sun with food and my most favorite people (not all pictured).
They say your forties are “in the middle,” but in a way, there’s always a middle, wherever we are. In fact, I’ve always found myself feeling “in the middle” in a multitude of ways: in the middle of cultures, aches and longings, celebration and lament, here and there, and yesterday and tomorrow…
Today, in the middle, I feel okay with my God-given pace and the pages that make me. I know that I don’t have to live in the chains of “should be,” “too slow,” and “too late,” but am free to live “right on time.”
Today, in the middle, I am full of deep gratitude for the people I’ve been so blessed to love, the ones I am loved by, and how every single person I’ve ever met and known has helped me see the world, myself, and God in a new and needed way.
Today, in the middle, I still wrestle with many things. I still question, I still forget and fall short, but today I know I can be honest about those things and bring it all to God, again and again.
Today, in the middle, I know I am held in love, even as I wrestle, question, doubt, forget and fall short.
Today, in the middle, I’m resting more fully in my own belovedness and the belovedness of others – this is everything to me now.
Today, in the middle, I am finding glimpses of shalom almost everywhere I look, and as an unexpected surprise, they are finding me.
What “middle” are you in right now?
What has being loved in a middle space helped you to be and know?
A breath prayer to keep for when you’re “in the middle”
Breathe in: Shalom can find me in the middle spaces
Breathe out: I can rest and be found
I mentioned being led by Aisea in worship and getting to meet him and his wife Elmira at the Abide gathering - together they run Minor Islands. Meeting Elmira and Aisea was one of my many highlights from the gathering. Their presence, and the glimpses of their stories shared from stage or over breakfast, somehow made me feel so at home.
Please check out Be Still and the latest release, Give Thnx, and listen to this podcast interview between Latasha and Aisea with Be the Bridge - you will not regret it.
I don’t know if the sun gets lonely or tired - but I know how grateful I am to feel it’s warmth on my face, and see how it reaches to bless each of our heads year after year, and how year after year, it keeps on rising.
Grateful and shalomsick,
Happy birthday, Tasha! I’m breathing in and breathing out. At rest and found, here in the middle. Sending love and prayers of joy and rest your way! Thank you for sharing your thoughts in writing today. 💜
Here in the middle of my fifties, in the middle of the transition between location-based and nomadic, in the middle between having adult children and the sad realization that I likely won't ever have any grandchildren, I am loved by my husband of nearly thirty-two years. He knows me better than anyone, has seen me at my worst and my best, and has almost lost me a few times (both physically and relationally). And yet he stays. What a precious gift.