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Picking up the pieces — Dr Iain Jamieson

Dr Iain Jamieson September 30, 2024 3 1
Picking up the pieces — Dr Iain Jamieson

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Picking up the pieces

Dr Iain Jamieson

In this moving, candid blog our dear friend Doctor Iain Jamieson reflects on: Moses, leaving our shell, intense pressure, times of upheaval and change, and ultimately — our loving Father God who can help us pick up the pieces and become a new kind of whole.

There are times in our lives when we find ourselves leaving our shell — moving from one thing to the next.

You might think it’s for your own good, you might feel you simply need to. You might, if you’re unlucky, if you’ve messed things up — have to.

I used to think, when I was a much younger man, of all the things I’d left behind. When I left my various shells. The relationships, the lifestyle, the kudos, the adventure. But mainly the me I was when I was that me then.

Bit of a tongue twister that. Bit of a brain twister when you really think about it.

People of the way — you and I perhaps — like to say things like, “I was led”. Meaning, the Lord God manifested to us a sense of our destiny and we followed.

We left our shells.

That might have been true of Moses. Bless him. It might be true of you. But me… I’m not so sure. Back then, if I myself was a humble man of the people of Israel I wonder if that’s how it would have felt. I mean, it might have of course – good old Moses got led — but me, well I might have felt dragged, it’s how it can feel right? When you’re not sure, when circumstances take over…

For some of us God gives a nudge.

For some of us God gives a push.

And for some of us — and I’m one, brothers and sisters — God gives us one almighty shove out of our shells – crack!

For some of us we need a shove.

So, I once had a job, a job I felt I was called to do and one which I applied myself to with as much of myself as I had. I travelled to foreign climes, I stayed in fancy hotels, I managed big things. I guess I thought, for a few minutes, I might be a big deal.

What does the good book say? “You shall have no other gods before me”

And, as my granny used to say, “See what thought did…”

Of course that was the good bit, that was the shell. It was fragile and ready to crack. (I myself was fragile and ready to crack.) Like all things there was the other side. This was prison medicine at the turn of the century — the violence, the chaos, the systemic breakdown of people under pressure in the worst of environments.

I’m not going to lie. I thrived. It was where I lived. Until I didn’t. Until one day I got a shove. My health cracked like an egg and I spilled out all over the place.

Too much pressure?

Time for a change?

God knew.

I didn’t.

Like those children of Israel I was spilling out from my shell, frying under the sun in the desert.

The Children of Israel gathered their possessions, their families, and all their memories and went forth into the wilderness.

Me, I tried to gather myself up (no mean task — ever tried to put the yolk back into a cracked egg?) I found I couldn’t do it. Who could put Humpty Dumpty back together again?

I couldn’t. I couldn’t pack it all in.

God did. God could.

There I was: bits and pieces of shell and everything inside — draining out all over the place.

And there he was: the guiding hands of the Father, gathering up the white, the yolk and giving it form, placing it back into to the bony, fragile cask that I’d thought I’d lost.

However, all that experience: the joy, the triumph and the hurt and the loss – nothing was wasted. Not one drop. Put back together, made perfect and smooth as the day I was laid.

All these pieces.

All that stuff.

You didn’t need the king’s horses, nor all the king’s men to put this numpty back together again…

You just needed the Father who could repair and heal and mend and put me back together again.

 

Dr Iain Jamieson