Relinquish

If I could I'd fold myself away like a card table

A concertina or a Murphy bed, I would

But I wasn't made that way 

-Oh my God, Whatever, Ryan Adams

And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 

Matthew 8:2-3

There is an intense isolation in chronic pain.

I don’t know about you, but it’s important to me to be understood—not just in matters of my various physical conditions. I long to make sense to people, probably because I rarely make sense to myself! If others can make sense of me, then perhaps I’m not such a jumble of a person. If you understand me, maybe I can understand myself more. When I don’t feel heard, I feel out of sorts, out of touch. I’m guessing that we all have these kinds of feelings and reactions when others don’t “get” us. 

So when we add an invisible chronic pain condition to the mix, it gets complicated. You can’t see any evidence of how I feel. You can’t see the fibromyalgia “cape of pain” across my upper back and shoulders, you can’t see how all my muscles and joints fees inflamed. Even my skin feels on fire sometimes. You can’t see the lack of sleep due to being so damn uncomfortable, how I lay awake into the wee hours due to body-wide aches, despite taking pain medication or rubbing essential oils into my skin or turning off electronics an hour before bed time, or any of the other myriad of fixes for insomnia I’ve tried. You can’t see the monthly cramps that pierce my pelvis like a knife, bending me in half and making me sick to my stomach. 

How do I reconcile my predilection for being understood without much fuss with having unseen physical conditions? Now, the fear of not being believed is one I struggle with on a daily basis, let alone merely being understood. I’m beginning to realize I’m asking a lot when I ask others to understand me these days! I’m asking you to believe something you can’t see, after all. I’m asking you, in some sense, to step into my shoes, imagine yourself in my place on my couch, in the line at the pharmacy, filling out paperwork at the doctor’s office. 

It’s very easy to start feel like I’m invisible. Like it’s not just my fibromyalgia that is unseen. Like if you can’t see my pain, you can’t see me. It’s easy to assume I’m merely the extent of my pain, of what I’m feeling. It’s a battle to counter these feelings, let me tell you. Especially when I can’t always rely on the mirror of others to help me figure things out. If others don’t believe me, maybe I’m making this stuff up. Maybe it’s all my head. Maybe my pain isn’t as serious as I think it is. Maybe I don’t need to rest as much as I think. But then I calm down and think about the last 4 years or so, and remember. I remember the aches and the struggles and the efforts to figure it out. I remember the suffered relationships, the cutting back of activities, the many lessons of learning to communicate well.

These things are slowly teaching me, though, to relinquish my desires to be understood. Because that’s actually not the most important thing. It’s not even attainable! Even if I didn’t have fibro, you still couldn’t understand me completely. You still would have to take my word on how I feel. I still would have to figure out how to own my feelings and responses and choices without the approval or the opinion of others. So it will always be difficult. And even though I feel alone and invisible sometimes on my worst days, I know the people around do see me. My awe-inspiring husband believes me and takes care of me and takes on so many responsibilities out of love and joy and a desire to help me. He believes me more than I believe myself often. The friendships and relationships I have became so much closer, more honed because things have changed.

And not only by my husband and family and friends and co-workers. The One who saw and touched the ill and those on the outskirts sees me, too. He dignified the existence of the invisible and untouchable ones by physically touching them. He recognized the powerless and their situations, and saw them. Wherever we are at in our lives, we can be bold because Jesus sees us. He has compassion on us, He is waiting to heal us. Let us not fold ourselves away in our pain and our circumstances, but be free to kneel before Jesus and say, “If you will.” 

Peace on Earth

Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown, and tomorrow is a Monday morning. 

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Jesus, John 10:10

Christmas is in one week. We’re all rushing around, finding gifts and putting up sparkly lights and eating lots of sugar. I’ve got Christmas music playing on my iPod at work. I ran around the mall tonight, trying to find an ugly Christmas sweater. We’re planning family events and the food (of course) and how much fun we’ll all have. We’re trying to budget presents. We’re basking in the light of our happy Christmas tree. 

And why do we do all these things? Why do we spend the money, why do we dig out the Christmas boxes of decorations, why do we make all the plans? 

Because one day, all will be well. 

One day, all will be right. All will be redeemed. All the pain will disappear, all the sad tears will dry. All the questions we have will be answered. Our bodies will be healed, our minds will be at peace. All the horrible things that have ever happened to us will be corrected and redeemed. All the wonderful things we’ve experienced will be more beautiful in the context of a world made perfect and whole. Our broken relationships will be fixed—all hurts and misunderstandings will fade away. 

One day, we will see all the people we love how they are meant to be—whole and shining. One day, our loved people will not be sick, not be haunted by their pasts. We will look at their faces and wonder how we never really saw how special, how wonderful, how incredible they are. They will amaze us—they will be everything they ever wanted to be, and more. We will be able to spend time with them and laugh and cry happy tears together. 

For now, we fix our gaze on what is to come-on Jesus coming to redeem this entire broken world. For now, we suffer with those who suffer. We pray for wars to end, for relationships to heal, for illness and poverty and discrimination to end, for grace for all. We do what we can, wherever we are, to bring heaven to earth. We hang lights in hope, we give presents to remind each other of our love, of our grace for them. We remember the promises of Scripture, we remember the stories of Jesus. We also remember how He had to come to earth as a baby, to be like us in our pain and sorrow and joy and relationships. We remember how He lived and loved and suffered—and we remember that He did it all for us. We remember we have a Savior who is Christ the Lord, who loves all us all to pieces, and gave us the Great Gift of Himself. 

Waiting for a Calm Sea

I work hard every day of my life

I work till I ache my bones

At the end I take home my hard earned pay all on my own 

I get down on my knees

And I start to pray

Till the tears run down from my eyes

Somebody to Love, Queen

And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
Mark 4:39

Life is like the sea. 

Unpredictable, constant movement. Terrifying in a storm, blissful on a peaceful day, the sea is always changing, always beautiful. I live by the water, by a bay. Cocooned by mountains and flatlands and rivers, I am most at ease next to water. I can sit on a bench or a beach and watch the waves come and go, tides ebbing and flowing for hours. The sea is like breathing, like a rhythm that I can’t find anywhere else, let alone in my own head. It’s a peaceful metronome, the coming and going of crashing waves. 

Life feels like those crashing waves—they just keep coming and coming. It’s one thing to watch beautiful waves beachside—another to be engulfed by never-ending tides. When you are up to your neck in rising waves, the last thing you want is more water. How can it be peaceful or beautiful when there’s too much of it? There are days when life is simply overwhelming, and I’d like to simply stand on the beach and watch the water for a while, instead of tumbling over and over in its wake. I’d like to catch my breath before jumping back in, or splash around in the tide pools, or turn over a few barnacled-rocks. 

Fibromyalgia has been a furious tidal wave these last few months, weeks, days. I am drenched in exhaustion, soaked to my bones and muscles in pain and aches. Endometriosis is a tsunami of stabbing pelvic pain, allowing no time to come up for air. I’m tired from fighting all these waves of chronic pain, weary with battle fatigue. I’m tired from trying All The Things, of endless resting and putting my feet up, which is a little bit ironic. I’m desperate for a peaceful sea, to be able to lie on my back and just float for a while, even a little while. 

I’m desperate for Jesus to do for me what He did for the disciples, when He calmed their storm. He was exhausted, sleeping during a storm in a rickety boat. When will He wake up and see that I’m frightened, that I’m crazily trying to get my boat under control, but I can’t do it by myself? When will He cease these winds and rains and waves? Until He does, I will grit my teeth and hold on. I will hold on to the fact that there were terrifying moments even for the disciples He was physically with-those moments before He calmed the storm. It must have felt like an eternity to them, waiting for Him to act. But when He did, oh my. He rebuked the elements, He put the sea back in its place. And there was a great calm. And the disciples knew that Jesus was more than their great Teacher-He was the One who commanded the winds and the seas.  At last, here is the One who is bigger and larger than all my storms, all the things that life can throw at me—I am safe even though I am at sea.