Sacred Gardens

There's this defining moment in my life that I've always struggled to put into words or understand. For decades I could identify the feelings in my mind, but I have never really been able to truly conceptualize them. It's been over 35 years since that moment in time, and looking back, I can see how life has begun to unveil a truth to me about that moment. This truth has revealed itself through sometimes painful patterns in my life and in the lives of the people around me. Family, friends, children and now more rhythmically, my clients. The latter clarifying this indescribable moment for me.

I was in high school when a fracture occurred in my family. A devastating blow to close relationships. The choices of one, perhaps, unraveling beautiful threads that had been carefully woven through my childhood. My home seemed to go silent. Instant retreat. Instant isolation. Discomfort permeating the space. No one dared speak what had happened for fear of giving voice to its reality. All became quiet. Once a joyful and bustling home, now a silent and tense existence.

Separation.

For the better part of this last year I have sat with people that don’t feel like their life has gone or is going the way they desire. Often they have found themselves in behaviors or have made choices that they never set out to make. Does anyone really set out to have an addiction, betray their spouse, cut off precious relationships, walk away from their faith, get divorced? To some these behaviors and decisions look much like a series of poor choices, or in biblical terms, straight up sin. But I've come to see them instead as a series of symptoms. Symptoms of deeper wounds that they are desperately trying to heal themselves. Throughout their life, the symptom, the bleeding, has been haphazardly wrapped over and over and over again with poorly placed gauze. In our time together we begin to gently and carefully unwrap those layers only to uncover a deep wound that has festered without the proper cleansing and dressing it so desperately needed. And without fail each client can pinpoint exactly the origin of that wound. Sometimes its just flicker in their mind or a snapshot. And sometimes its a detailed cinematic feature, but either way, it is imprinted in their body and soul. And I can describe each wound with one word.

Separation.

Separation when a parent leaves through divorce. Separation when peers reject or bully. Separation when a significant other betrays or abandons. Separation when someone never feels heard in their own home. Separation when they don’t fit in, when they’re ostracized, when they’re cut off from belonging. Separation from safety when they are hurt or abused. It doesn't matter how you slice it, separation is the most painful experience of the human soul.From the v ery beginning, humanity’s wound has been separation. Adam and Eve lived in God’s presence. They walked with Him, unashamed. It wasn’t until after they partook of the fruit that the wound came. The wound of separation. Some might say that the wound was a direct result of their own sin. But latter-day saint theology reframes that choice, as a courageous step into mortality. A necessary crossing that opened the way for growth, joy, and the redeeming reach of Christ’s grace.

Separation.

This same pattern repeats in our lives over and over again. Every wound of separation is a small echo of Eden. And the behaviors we condemn in ourselves and others, those are the symptoms that quietly cry out, "I'm scared. I'm alone"

Scripture itself sees these symptomatic behaviors in this light; “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God” and 'They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick”
The message is clear: Humanity is not the enemy. Separation is.

When a client comes in, ashamed of what they’ve done or experienced I try to picture them the way Christ met the woman caught in adultery, refusing to condemn, and instead reminding them of who they are and pointing them toward hope. The gospel lens helps me see that their symptoms aren’t proof that they are hopeless or rebellious, but that their symptoms are alarms pointing to where feelings of love and connection have been lost. That shift matters. Because if we think humanity itself is the enemy, then the only solution is to suppress, deny, or despise our humanness. But if separation is the enemy, then the solution is restoration. Restoration of connection, of belonging, of relationship.

That’s what Christ came to do. That’s what grace provides.

That is the invitation for each of us, to stop waging war against our own humanity, and instead join Christ in the work of mending the separations around us and within us.

One mini-Eden at a time.