2022 Easter Stories: Charis Landis

Following Easter Sunday, different members of our congregation are sharing their stories about how they have found hope through Christ’s resurrection despite the pain and brokenness that we experience in this fallen world. Charis Landis shared these words at our May 8, 2022 worship service.

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I don’t know about you, but the past decade has been pretty trying for me and my family. Definitely not without the good, even the very good, but to be honest there has just been more than enough bad for my liking. Painful losses, a boatload of trauma and complicated grief, burdens just too heavy to keep trying to shoulder, and of course it all culminated with a pandemic. I know I’m not alone; We Have Not Been Fine. Today I want to share a little of how God’s love has blasted through the mess.

Three years ago, I found myself sitting in the first session of a contemplative spiritual disciplines group called Soul Listening, aka BE QUIET AND LISTEN. The first reflection we did was on the story in the book of Mark where Jesus heals a blind beggar named Bartimaeus. As impressive and outlandish a healing miracle is, what I couldn’t quite get over was Bartimaeus’ faith. See, Bartimaeus had been yelling, like actually yelling out to Jesus for help. Yelling for Jesus to have mercy on him, despite people around him trying to shush him and who were probably embarrassed and assuming it was a waste of Bartimaeus’ time. Of course, it wasn’t, and Jesus heard him and healed him and said to him “your faith has made you well”.

As we read this during that first session together, I remember being so confused that I couldn’t remember this story: my degree is in Biblical Studies, I grew up a missionary kid; surely I’d read it countless times. But this kind of faith hadn’t struck me before: Bartimaeus had faith not just in Jesus’ ability but in His LOVE. What struck me wasn’t his faith that Jesus could heal him, but the faith that Jesus would want to heal him.

So, from that time on, the idea of my own desires and needs being seen and loved by Jesus felt very out of reach, but started floating around my consciousness more and more. And also, the pains and tensions of life just kept building and building with no give.

By January 2020, I felt an incredible amount of stuckness and failure and fear for the future. I was maybe starting to step out of the cruel ride of grief that’s like foggy and dark and cold, but it seemed like I was stepping into an awakeness of exhaustion and dryness, like a place where nothing had grown.

It was around this time that God gave me an image that has since come back to me over and over. The image is basically a field of tree stumps. It’s like I’m standing in this big field of browning overgrown grass, and the light is low and hazy and there are forests surrounding the field so I can’t see anything beyond this. And the stumps – they’re just everywhere. And they’re unmistakably mine.

I know where this image came from in part – I had read an article explaining how some Christmas tree farmers figured out a way to harvest trees so that new ones will grow back from the same stumps. And so, what appears to be all loss and death could actually become a whole new beloved tree.

New trees aside, it was obvious to me why this image of cut down, dead trees resonated so strongly. I won’t name what all my stumps were, but you can be sure I saw actual people and places and things in them. People and places and things I can’t get back, no matter my faith. There were also stumps representing things I wanted and hadn’t been given. But the first thing about getting this image was the whisper that came with it: I’m here with you.

If 2020 was a year of feeling painfully stuck and almost not making it, 2021 was a year of doing something about it, or trying to. I really struggled with the idea of me having any wants and desires – was I allowed to, like not just in theory? It was hard to cry out to God for healing and mercy because I didn’t have the faith that He wanted to, that He loved me like that.

But this image of the field kept coming, kept coming…..and the message started to become: walk towards these stumps, even in what feels like wilderness – I am the Creator of this wildness and I make things grow.

The image started to turn greener, and I could see new vines spiraling and trees starting to grow. It was God, our wild Creator, bringing life to dry bones.

I recently took steps towards a very long-awaited goal of using sign language in my work. This was the scariest thing I had decided to do in a long time – and I’ve done some intimidating things before. But this desire of mine to pursue work outside the home is very connected to deeply embedded obstacles and fears. I didn’t know how or what to do, I hadn’t really been actively using ASL since before Aurora, my 8-year-old daughter was born. That’s a long time to not use a whole language. For years I’ve felt a lot of shame and inadequacy about not using these skills and about losing these skills.

Simply sending my resume to a posting on indeed.com felt like an accomplishment, but then, gasp, I was emailed back and invited to a Hiring Open House the next week. I was excited and scared – scared to want something, excited to just do something. The interview went surprisingly well but then I was required to take an ASL proficiency test. Not some phony screening – this would require me to sign and probably interpret for an unknown amount of time in front of a panel of Deaf professionals who work for the NJ Division of Vocational Rehabilitation.

Walking towards this job, this interview, and especially this test felt in many ways like just running towards a very deadened stump. I found though, that no matter what would happen with it, the same Jesus that saw and heard and loved Bartimaeus, was seeing and hearing and loving me. So I kept walking. Hadn’t he been with me in the wilderness, and would continue to be?

And God is wild! Just several weeks ago I started in this job where I will work in a supportive role as an employment specialist to Deaf and HH people. It’s a job where I have to see people, which is maybe the only thing I’m confident that God has given me to do in life, though I’ve so often wanted a shinier way. No matter what happens with this job (it’s only been a few weeks!:)), I hope I always remember the way it felt like some resurrection love – enlivening a place that was dead. I couldn’t even always cry out for help in faith: but His love for us is greater.