Sometimes a single question can open a flood of knowing.
When my Spiritual Director asked,
“Where is God meeting you in your pain?”
The tears came before the words.
Tears for the ache in my body.
Tears for those I serve in their own weariness.
Tears for Jesus—who meets me in the breaking and does not look away.
Pic – @AbigailPauley
Just days before, I had been holding a small plate of communion wafers in both hands, walking beside my pastor, who carried a tray of tiny cups filled with juice. Together, we moved slowly through a skilled nursing facility, offering the sacred elements to one frail body after another:“This is the body of Christ, broken for you… This is the blood of Christ, shed for you.”
The profoundness of the moment was not lost on me.
I was broken, serving the broken body of Christ to those who also felt broken. My own pain pulsed through me as I passed out the Host—the very presence of Christ, who bore our burdens and knows our suffering.
These elements are more than symbols; they are a means through which Christ’s spiritual presence is encountered.
This sacred act of communion has taken on even deeper meaning since my fall last October. In just seconds, my identity shifted—from athlete to broken body. The physical pain has been relentless, reshaping the rhythm of my days.
Pic – @AbigailPauley
And yet, as God so often does, He invited me into a deeper knowing—a living experience of communion.
And in that knowing, comfort has swept over me.
Christ does indeed know my pain.
He meets us in our brokenness—not to leave us there, but to transform it into something sacred.
Carrying that truth with me, I return to the quiet spaces where pain and presence meet.
To answer the question, “Where is God meeting you in your pain?”
God meets me in communion, in the breaking of bread:
“This is the body of Christ, broken for you.”
From my heart to yours
Until next time
Raechal!