God Didn’t Kill Me. He Cleaned Me Like a Chicken.

There’s a difference between being destroyed and being prepared for fire.

There are moments after worship that I feel completely spatchcocked.

As if God himself ripped my chest open and pulled out the insecurities logged deep behind my ribcage.

The clogged up stuff that makes me feel less than human in my bachelor pad late nights after my cat has fallen asleep.

The fur balls from licking my own wounds. The lint of regret from broken promises to Him.As I write, I remember killing chickens on my grandpa's farm.

He did the "un-heading."

My aunt did the defeathering with manic clawing of feathers after a deep baptism in boiling water. But Grandma did the gutting.

The dirty work.

The removal of the intestines. I remember, logged inside those chickens they all tenderly cared for, were organs they considered precious: the liver, the heart, and the gizzard.

Tucked away beneath the stink—my grandma's smiling face and gentle hands would find them even without looking.

I don't know what the chicken version of "humane" is, but my grandmother gave them respect and an unfamiliar dignity.

I feel this is how God deals with me in these moments...Often, it's not in the public altar but in my shower,sitting around the small round table I feel proud of myself for buying after I just migrated, or late nights when I am flat on my back bawling my eyes out in between sobs and incoherent prayers.

It's then I feel Him reach in and open up the gizzard and remove all the things I've fed on.

I remember the chuckle my grandmother would make when she found odd objects in the chicken's gizzard—like stones or insects.

God sometimes finds these vile things in me too:

a Twitter link or two,

a conversation,

a nude,

unbelief wrapped in satire,

suicidal ideations surrounding Tylenol,

a month's tithes withheld,

anger,

and even the occasional bitterness.

He doesn’t discard the whole chicken.

(Cowards to the front.) Somehow again, I just remember my grandmother cautioning me that near to the liver was the bile duct that had the potential to ruin the meat.

That had to be extracted with ease and swiftness.

Sometimes when God pulls away things I feel I need at certain times even after allowing it to persist—

I know it's His expert timing. And I am learning to accept.

Back to after service and altars.

Spatchcocked after that.

Sometimes He removes my backbone publicly. Completely slaying me on altars like a grill. My dependency removed. A complete sacrifice.

And some Sundays, or Wednesdays, or Friday nights in worship

I do get His nudge—

that I am a surrendered sacrifice.

This is as a result of post-church hunger and a great worship service.

@Black Glass

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