When your wheelchair is called Karma

I do not have a theology of suffering. No I don’t.

It is not that I don’t need one, it is that I need to not have one.

Why? Because my wheelchair is called Karma.

Seriously. Because some business owner thought it would be a good idea to call a wheelchair company Karma and then plaster that word all over said wheelchair so that when you have to get one because you are several days past the point where you can no longer get yourself around on crutches, and it arrives calling itself Karma… you wonder. What did I do to deserve this?

The problem is I can think of many things. I have not been the best wife or mother, daughter or friend. And when it comes to showing Jesus to those who don’t know Him, that has often completely fallen off my radar. I have tried to eat healthy and exercise, but every day there is a new book telling you that everything you are eating is wrong and everything you are not eating is right, telling you how to reinvent the wheel and that you must do just one thing more or less.

But although I may not have a theology of suffering I do hold to one simple theology and it is called grace not karma. This one truth that props me up and carries me through past busy days and the time now sitting wondering why my left leg still will not move – it’s Jesus not karma.

That may sound simple, but it is trickier than you would think. As Ellie Wiesel writes about Jewish legends of Job, “He wanted it (his suffering) to be a result, a consequence rather than a gratuitous act. In other words, Job would have preferred to think of himself as guilty…. He preferred a cruel and unjust God to an indifferent God.”

Yes that is what I do with all my shaming and second guessing of myself in every area of life. It is easier to be disappointed in myself than in God. Disappointed in myself that I can not keep babies alive inside my womb, or control my leg, stand on my own two feet, take care of my children… This is easier than wondering why God allows babies to die, and my friends’ lives to be taken over by disease, why He just stands there during wars, abuse, my Grandmother’s Alzheimer’s and a million other unjust heartbreaks, why he is allowing this comparatively small trial of the loss of using my leg, why He has asked me to be so still and unable.

So I cannot have a theology of suffering, and it’s not really because of my current situation; it’s because of an entire world of brokenness. Because I just don’t believe we all had this coming to us. And at the same time it’s easy to see that none of us have heaven coming to us either.

Ellie Wiesel goes on to say that after railing against and questioning God, Job heard him speak. Did God give an answer that solved everything? No, He just spoke, and hearing the almighty, hidden, unimaginable, loving One was enough.

Theology of suffering – no. God with us – yes. Because when things don’t make sense neither do words, knowledge, or practices of connecting the dots. But when things don’t make sense, the Mystery is present, and can be felt, known, relied upon.

It’s been almost a month. I thought I was hurt and would get better soon – that’s what the doctors said. But then I went from shuffling with a cane, to dragging my leg on crutches, to now I’m in a chair with a leg that dangles and twists when I try to stand; medical appointments and tests are piling up, and no one has any answers yet.

All I know is that my wheelchair isn’t karma, neither are the good days, and I won’t get out of it by having enough faith. I don’t know if friends will be healed, and there is no theology that really truly makes that ok in my heart. But as I sit here there is not a shadow of a doubt that One who loves us is all around, living, active, redeeming.

We can rejoice and we can suffer, because all is Grace.