The Cost—and Gift—of Incarnational Living
A Reflection on Embodied Healing
As we’ve been exploring practices of embodied healing—slowing down, tending to the nervous system, honoring emotions and sensations—I want to begin introducing a word that gives deeper meaning and theological grounding to this healing journey:
Incarnational.
It’s a word rooted in the Latin incarnare—to make flesh.
And central to our Christian faith is the Incarnation itself: the profound mystery of Jesus, the Son of God, becoming human. Not just appearing human, but taking on the full vulnerability, beauty, and limits of human flesh.
Not Just a Doctrine, But a Way of Life
Living the Incarnation is not just a theological idea.
It’s a path—a narrow, demanding, luminous path.
Jesus, the eternal Word, did not remain abstract.
He entered history.
He entered skin.
He became flesh and dwelt among us.
And not just to save us from our bodies, but to redeem us through them, with them, in them.
This changes everything.
To follow Him is to follow Him not only in spirit but in body.
In sensation. In breath. In fatigue. In hunger. In heartbreak. In joy.
What Embodiment Really Means for Disciples of Christ
When I speak of incarnational healing, I’m talking about a path of wholeness that includes your body—not as an afterthought, but as the very ground of healing.
It’s what embodiment means in its truest sense for us as followers of Christ:
To live from within our flesh, fully human, awake to God’s presence in every cell, breath, ache, and emotion.
Why It’s So Hard—and So Worth It
Let’s be honest:
To actually inhabit our bodies with presence and prayer is hard.
It goes against almost everything the modern world teaches us.
Our culture rewards disconnection:
Speed. Productivity. Emotional bypassing.
We’re constantly pulled out of our inner life and into a thousand shallow demands.
And for those of us carrying trauma or chronic emotional burdens, coming back into the body can feel more like entering a war zone than a sanctuary.
But Jesus Lived Embodied
Why would we want to live this way?
Because this is the way.
Jesus, the Way, lived enfleshed.
He felt hunger, wept tears, leaned on others, sweat blood, and let Himself be touched—even in His resurrected body.
To live embodied is to let ourselves be human in full—
Not just intellectually.
Not just spiritually.
But viscerally.
The Cost—and the Invitation
To live this way is to slow down enough to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit—not just in Scripture or silence, but in your gut, your tension, your trembling, your breath.
And this kind of listening… this kind of living…
Will change you.
But not without cost.
Living incarnationally means you will feel more.
You will face the parts of yourself you’d rather avoid.
You will encounter the grief, fear, need, longing, and ache buried in the tissues of your being.
You will see how fragile you are.
How limited.
How little.
The Sacred Feast of Being Fully Alive
But it’s in this littleness that the miracle happens.
When you finally stop performing and protecting…
When you sit down at the table of your real experience and let both the sweetness and the bitterness be served…
You begin to feast.
You begin to live in the present moment.
You begin to participate in the mystery of Christ in you.
You begin to breathe more deeply in your smallness, knowing you are held.
And in that place—of sacred embodiment, of grounded surrender—you realize:
This is what it means to be fully alive.
To suffer, rejoice, struggle, and hope…
In a body. With God. Together.
With you on the journey,
Kolbe
