Across the past three reflections, I’ve been writing from a field most people don’t see—among the trauma-formed, the silence-carriers, the ones the world didn’t stay for. That’s my people group, and it’s the lens I write from. But I want to say plainly that these themes—Presence, breath, naming—are not exclusive to trauma. They are human. They show up in leadership, in mission, in formation, in grief, in spiritual threshold. And if we name “trauma” too many times, there’s a risk people will treat it as something happening over there—something distant, specialised, exceptional.
But that’s not what this is.
This is not content for a subset.
It’s witness from a field that reveals something the whole body needs to hear.
These aren’t theoretical pieces. They are real-time accounts of Presence at the threshold—held among people who have often had no place in the room.
Together, I believe these three reflections trace a coherent arc. They don’t form a system or a solution, but they spiral out from a shared centre: the kind of Presence that doesn’t arrive with noise, the kind of breath that returns slowly, and the kind of naming that rebuilds what trauma tried to erase. They’re written from the field—but not just about the field. They carry movement, witness, and language that belongs wherever people are learning to stay near what hurts without turning away.
And this isn’t a sideline view. This is the gospel. Jesus didn’t begin at the centre and make a compassionate detour to the margins. He was born outside. Lived outside. Was crucified outside. His entire ministry spirals out from presence among the ones systems discard. The disciples weren’t a mission field—they were the ones he stood among. They knew him. He called them from where they were already standing, already aching, already labouring. And when he said “Follow me,” he didn’t just commission them. He became mobile Presence. He led the way in motion—not away from pain, but through it. So when I write from the field, I’m not stepping away from orthodoxy—I’m writing from within the place Jesus began. The place he still dwells.
Part One explored what happens when Presence arrives quietly and without resolution. It held the tension that Presence isn’t proof—it doesn’t arrive as validation that things are okay. It comes as mercy, not spectacle. Not because we’ve healed, but because God chooses to dwell here. We don’t co-opt Presence to explain our stories. We are abided into it. It is not the sign that we’ve arrived. It’s the beginning of where mission and mercy take root.
Part Two followed the naming gate. It lingered in the garden, in the breath between grief and recognition, in the moment Jesus speaks “Mary.” Not as explanation. As invitation. As reconstitution. This was not just naming—it was naming that moved. Mary becomes a verb. The first apostle not by credential, but by encounter. This is what real sending looks like: to be named into motion. Not after you’ve recovered. But as you’re still breathing through the ache.
Part Three came to rest at the table. Where the resurrected Jesus cooks breakfast. Where mission is not a platform or a strategy, but a fire and food. Jesus doesn’t begin with explanation. He begins with presence that cooks. Nourishes. Holds. This is where resurrection breathes—not in spectacle, but in shared re-regulation. Not in proving, but in coexisting. The disciples are still processing. Still unsure. And still—he feeds them. He stays. And he sends them from there.
Together, these three movements aren’t just a devotional arc—they’re a glimpse of God’s own apostolic rhythm. We often inherit models that frame mission as what comes after we’ve healed, or what we go and do once we’ve resolved the ache. But in each of these moments, Jesus doesn’t wait for healing to complete. He begins in the ache. He meets people in trauma-space—not to extract a testimony, but to re-humanise them in breath, body, and name.
This is not a detour from the apostolic—it’s the blueprint.
God’s sending always begins in Presence.
He breathes before he instructs. It is not absence. It is preparation for return
If we are named we are sent .
He feeds: we carry the fire that feeds us.
We see in these three scenes what real sending looks like:
It happens from the threshold.
From the garden.
From the fire.
From the grief that hasn’t fully cleared, and the body that hasn’t yet stopped trembling.
This is what it means to be sent as Jesus was sent (John 20:21).
Not with noise, but with breath.
Not with tools, but with attention.
Not from triumph, but from table.
This is also what it means to be mobile Presence (some of these insights were sharpened in dialogue with Martin’s recent post on mobile holiness which I deeply appreciated). To move as Jesus moved—not from centre to margin, but from among, as one who has stayed, eaten, wept, breathed, and still walks. Incarnational presence isn’t an abstract theology—it’s God pitching his tent, not in temple courts but in hungry places. It’s John 1:14 lived out in movement:
“The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.”
We become mobile not because we are strong, but because Presence never stayed still.
This is Jesus’ mission.
To be with.
To dwell.
To send not by platform, but by breath.
Sometimes we are still trembling at the edge—
waiting for the ache to pass before we speak,
before we go,
before we believe we’re part of the story—
let me say this plainly:
We already are.
The threshold is not where you wait to be fixed.
It’s where Jesus meets you, breathes peace, and sends you from there.
This is how resurrection moves.
Presence.
Naming.
Shared fire.
And a path that begins not in power, but in Presence that stays.
To go may look like to staying.
To remain may look like to running.
But either way-we walk among.