Lingua Wrecked

 

Lingua wrecked is sort of a "lingua franca" of those who wrestle in life; a connecting language that links your experience to my experience and to the life of that guy on the curb by the liquor store.

If lingua franca is a "bridge language, a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue,"* than "lingua wrecked" must be love.

It is a great linguistic equalizer.

It is not the language I expected to learn when I gave away most of my stuff, kissed my college-aged kids goodbye, and moved south to follow the sense of call, and become a missionary.

I anticipated language of "healing the brokenhearted and setting captives free"; of declaring peace and life where the stench of death had too-long reigned.

Perhaps, I dreamed even of learning a little Southern – the cadence of my words slowing to a sweat-tea soaked drawl.

However, in learning this language of the wrecked ones, I have learned when all is lost and hope is shattered and failure is immense, there is still love and peace to be found in a community of wholehearted people.

There is grace and it is often scarred, imperfect and lingua wrecked connects us not to commiserate, but to heal. To hold one another's arms up in the battle. To seek out the one lost lumbering sheep. To release all of the lesser things in the hope of receiving the one greatest thing. To remind one another that even though giving up seems the only thing left, to hang on instead.

Oh my soul.

Grief saturating a broken spirit speaks this flickering hopeful language of the wrecked with dialects of uncertainty, not knowing, fear, weakness, and wind-swept wide-eyed hunched-over pain.

Nights tremble on.

Days descend into night.

A common cry from the dark places is heard in the heart of a God who chooses imperfect people to join with him to love and live fully.

You hear this unifying language of the broken in Asian alleyways, Polynesian meeting houses, fancy McMansions, lonely places by the sea, and in the undulating waves of people in the bustling hustling cities.

It is a cry that God first hears before we can even form it on our lips.

When our soul first awakes to the shock of life and whether we are positioned to serve or be served, the words are first echoes of our breaking hearts.

. . .

All is not lost.

It is just the beginning.

When we experience the broken, trembling, unfixable realities of this world, we tend to cry out to God and ask him to help. It is in that cry, that hope is uttered and we are ushered into the fraternity of those who no longer settle for ordinary lives.

Real life teaches us the language of the wrecked and the dialect of dependence.

Prayers teach us that we have hope enough to call out to who we cannot see.

And community teaches us that we are not alone in our untethering from what we thought we knew.

We call out encouragement and "heads up" for the boulders ahead.

We learn to ask for help as we've learned our own spectacular efforts lead to perishing.

Lingua wrecked – though born in brokenness – connects us "where we live" when we decide to finally leave the shadows and façades and move to where the good earth is turned.

It is a messy, wonderful, expanding language of life lived in love – taking risks and wiping tears and running noses.

It is the language learned away from the television sitcoms and shopping malls where our own lives become the heroic story told.

It is the language of the broken and the brave shared in times of uncertainty and whispered prayers.

We are woven together by this hard truth-telling and believing.

And what is better than a true story told in good company around a warm fire?

 

*thank you wikipedia