God has said few things to me. I can count them on a hand or two.
We have walked closely I think, except for those years in high school and all the days I just can’t be bothered. But overall I have known Him and He has been near since before I can even remember. I was one of those grow up in a Christian home, pray the sinner’s prayer a thousand times types of kids.
So I’m not saying we don’t commune… This writing is a pouring out of prayer, until recently every run was sacred holy communion time. But as far as speaking a sentence, a certain promise, those moments are few and far between. And they are always accompanied by great pain.
Do you mind if I list them here for you? So I don’t forget…
- After we sprinkled Joshua’s ashes in the sea, and the sun shot out a beam from behind the clouds. After a feeling of heavenly laughter, joy, and welcome overwhelmed me. After I cried out, standing holding my post-partum belly in ankle deep water, cried out to hold a healthy babe. God said “I will send him to you.” So simple and sure I thought it must be wishful thinking. I told Him those words were just my own mind playing tricks on me so He overwhelmed every thought until that was all I could hear. “I will send him to you.” For ten more months I hoped the most tentative hope until Jeremiah was in my arms – sent by God.
2. After losing Beacon at sixteen weeks the shower was my place to assail God with grief, rage, and desire as the water rained down and enveloped. “I will give you more,” He said. Night after night, no answers, just “I will give you more.” I asked him if that meant another child? No reply. So I decided to believe Him. To believe that He would give something that would fill my heart whether that meant another baby or other dreams and purposes for my life – or just Himself. After another miscarriage, a failed business, various tangents and a lot of good life God gave me my daughter Elizabeth Joy – so much more.
3. My leg stopped working. My husband was deployed, and even before he left for nine months our marriage was both life-giving and hard. Friends were dealing with all the difficult this life hands out, and the whole world seemed on fire. I told my counselor I felt lost. He said to tell my Heavenly Father what I was angry about, and to listen. So I told God I didn’t like how things were ending up. He said, “I know, but I love you.” And that was enough. My leg still isn’t working, my husband is still over the seas, our marriage is showing signs of redemption but it’s still very human, friends are hurting, the world is still breaking and burning – and those words are enough.
4. Daily doctor appointments, so much driving. I turn the music up and it feels good just to move without crutches, without a wheelchair, without dragging, lurching, stumbling. Feels good to just glide along the highway and be like everyone else racing along in their vehicles too. Still the pain is raw, I tell my husband I feel like one gaping wound trying to hold onto faith. Trying to sit quietly enough to be held and comforted. A child. O Praise the Name comes on, and I see the world slipping past my window, houses full of heartbreak and joy, hills that proclaim Christ’s name and quake when their foundations shift. Suddenly, I feel how the sky will split, how this world will give into His overcoming – how everything will be changed in an instant. “This is not how it ends up,” God whispers clearly. I round a bend and glorious Indiana thunderheads tower in the California sky before me.
5. The first time I go to church in a wheelchair I sit at the end of a row, and I don’t know how to sing. Just like I did after losing Joshua I tell God that no matter what I trust Him, I love Him, none do I have in heaven and on earth but Him. Still I don’t know how to sing so I just sit and let others’ praises and prayers wash over me. Then there is a melody, a song I do not know, maybe the sweetest I have ever heard. The sweetness is palpable, and then I hear it. God speaks, “You are coming home to me.” I know better than to doubt His voice – it is the same as when I stood wet-footed with an empty urn in my hand. It is as always, a simple and vague promise that is mine to find out what it means. Instantly I feel joy and relief. Because this pray the sinner’s prayer kid knows full well her sins and continuing failures and always fears that grace hasn’t worked for her, maybe her place won’t be with God. But this is as certain of a promise as I have ever heard from my Creator. I am coming home to Him. The next instant I panic because doctors have been talking about and doing tests for all the scary, debilitating, and terminal diseases. Is this God’s way of telling me I won’t just be living with a leg that doesn’t work? Is it His way of preparing me to leave my children and this life? As the song plays on I ask Him if He minds clarifying just when I will be coming home… Silence. I see my choice – joy or fear. And in that moment I decide to choose the joy of a God who made a way and will welcome me home. A Loving Father who promises me eternal life. Because even if the doctors do all the tests they can give me no guarantees. None of us ever have any guarantees. The journey home may be short or long. Even if it is long, it is short. So I ask God for many more days on this path, and I think how different each morning might be if I wake to think of it as just one more step towards home.
Friends we are going home. Going home.
I want to be here to see my children grow, I want to hold them when they cry, laugh, and dream. I want to watch them walk aisles, I want to hold grand babies. Whenever the day comes that there is a diagnosis, an accident, or a gradual slipping away – I will be afraid, I will grieve, but I will be going home. This I don’t deserve, but I am grateful beyond words. This is only ever because of Jesus.
I know this because God has not said much to me, but that He has promised me. I heard him.
I don’t know where to begin.
I can say with certainty that doors are very difficult now.
If I say anything else it will be an understatement. Because there is no way to share the days and weeks of driving to doctor’s appointments, rolling down hallway after hallway, enduring painful and scary tests. Learning a new normal daily as the situation worsened. But I know that many of you know this in your own lives so I don’t need to say these things.
If I say anything else it will be an unknown. The doctors tell me I had a complication from my injury that they didn’t catch in time. Nerves and veins were compressed, muscles deprived of blood-flow and oxygen. Now I have no function above the knee and little below it in my left leg. They hope it will get better with therapy, but cannot tell me how much I may recover, and the timeframe they give me is years.
And this is the good news, because although they can not say with absolute certainty, they don’t think we need to test further for diseases that would take over the rest of my body or kill me.
So I am learning among other things how to prop a door slightly ajar, and pull myself through. I am learning to swallow my shock and injured pride when others run to open the door for me, and just tell them thank you.
But I got stuck inside a door at Starbucks. I’m not sure how it happened except that these things do happen when you can’t use your leg and are making your way through the world in a chair for the first time. Just utterly, completely stuck until someone came over and easily swung the door wide, freeing me. I said thank you and hastily retreated to my car.
It made me think about that cliche saying (not from the Bible) “When God closes a door, he opens a window.”
I do not think I could climb out a window in my present state, and although God is the first cause, the mover of movers, I am not so sure that He is the one who closes doors. He is good and loving and nowhere have I rolled in my wheelchair to have a kind person slam a door in my face – so why would He?
I do not know how the theology for this assumption of mine works out. I don’t care.
What I do know is that there are many doors, and maybe the one I am being forced to travel through leads to somewhere I was not thinking of, choosing, or planning to go. But maybe God is holding it wide open so that I do not get stuck, and my only job is to roll on through and say thank you as He promises to be right by my side, to be all-encompassing even in the midst of this very broken world.
. . .
“Joy does not come from positive predictions about the state of the world. It does not depend on the ups and downs of the circumstances of our lives. Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world.”
-Henri J. M. Nouwen in Here and Now
My counselor said to make a new rhythm.
Here are the things I do now…
Go to the doctor, take showers, eat meals that other people make, get in the pool, read and write when I can get my mind to stop worrying long enough to focus, nurse my daughter, try to sleep through the night, watch funny movies, talk to my husband who is on the other side of the world and in a different day, listen to music.
Here are the things I can’t do currently…
Grocery shop, clean the house, take care of my twenty month old, cook meals, workout, fix anything, take my boys to do anything fun, go for a walk or run, keep up with my kids’ normal activities, help anyone, be self-sufficient, work in the yard, make plans, be productive, do all the things that normally give me a sense of worth and purpose.
And this is not ok with me. I cannot shake the sense of shame.
I told my counselor how unable I am to handle a simple thing like my leg not working correctly, and I even felt ashamed of this inability to cope with being broken. Because when I cannot do, then there is nothing to keep the fear that I am not enough at bay. As Brene Brown says,
“Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.”
But she also says, “I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out!”
So I did. I wrote a post about how my legs stopped working, and I posted a photo of myself in a wheelchair. And what did I hear from you friends?
I heard love and encouragement, but more than that I heard that you are ashamed too. I heard that as women we sink deep into shame when we cannot care for others or ourselves.
That was the one firm foothold I needed to take a step forward. To know that I am not the only one who does not cope well when I cannot do and do and do for those I love. I am not the only one who equates shame with being cared for. I am not the only one who fears losing my grip if the constant movement of this American life comes to a halt for me.
Those were the comments that let me know I am not alone, that gave me room to process that just maybe I have an addiction. I had picked up Seth Haine’s book Coming Clean a week earlier, and in it he gently reminds that we are ALL addicted to something because “Somewhere, (our) thirst for distraction from the pains and poverties of life grew into a sweltering, parching thing. There are always feelings to be numbed, anxieties to tamp down, and panic attacks to avoid.”
Maybe I am addicted to doing. Maybe I must be seen as capable. And if not I have to stare feeling of shame straight in the face – make sense of it and ask God what he has for me in this. What purifying, purging, pruning, growing thing can He do in the midst of a ridiculous situation?
Most of you have read Brene Brown so you know her antidote to shame is vulnerability. Well if shame is the poison I am getting a very large dose of this anti-venom because “Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.”
I do not want you to see me as someone who lays on the couch while others take care of my kids. I do not want you to see me as someone whose largest event for the day is going to the doctor or making it to the pool to awkwardly swim some laps. I do not want to be seen as someone who is caring for herself because somewhere along the line I absorbed the lie that a woman must only ever give herself away, and if I cannot help others achieve and succeed then I am not worthy – not enough.
Friends, I am writing this because I heard that you feel the same, and I do not understand why we feel so very ashamed in our brokenness, but I do know that we are not alone in this.
Again Brene Brown says “Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.”
This is the anthem I am claiming right now. My parenting, my home, my body, my schedule and goals have all been split right open at the seam. It all feels terribly vulnerable, but I am praying this will be dangerous. Dangerous to the enemy’s lies, dangerous to my addictions, dangerous to every person’s sense of shame who reads this post.
Let’s be dangerous friends. Let’s stand right here in whatever ridiculous situation we find ourselves in, stand right here with the Lord knowing there is nothing we have to prove, finding something to gain and give in our brokenness.
I have been married sixteen years today; I pulled out old pictures and realized I couldn’t remember why I had married that boy who has now been so long my husband.
Don’t get me wrong, I know why I am married currently, but I’m not sure the reasons that one stays married are enough. There is something purer, something silly, extravagant, and true about the reasons a girl marries a boy. And that is what I was in those old snapshots – a girl waiting for life to make her a woman.
This morning I decided forgetting was not an option so I sat there staring at our smooth faces and innocent smiles – remembering.
I married Jesse McKeeman because…
He made me the best scrambled eggs I had ever had.
He got up before dawn and stayed out past dark to run with me. We ran in snow, rain, and beating sun. We ran down crowded city streets, through the zoo, and on wooded trails. We laughed, talked and just breathed in and out beside each other mile after mile.
When I was sad or confused he knew just what to say and always took the time to say it.
He let me borrow his Keith Green CD’s.
His smile was contagious, and my lips wanted to feel his.
He showed me Jesus, told me of Jesus, gave me space and grace to know Jesus.
He was the FIRST boy who didn’t pressure me sexually or leave me for not giving some of my body away. The FIRST and ONLY boy who let me have complete control of my own body in our relationship.
He waited for me to finish college; he waited to marry me, waited to make love to me until I had the degree I had been working so hard for. Together we waited and dreamed.
His biceps were large, and he smelled of Old Spice.
He learned to swing dance with me, twirling me in his strong arms and lifting me above his head. We rollerbladed hours up and down a tree lined path and swam laps where I think he let me beat him. He even rode horses with me.
His car was red and fast. He was learning how to fly airplanes.
He worked and studied with me. He cooked with me and ate lunch together. He took me on some dates, but more often he just lived life with me.
He thought I was beautiful and didn’t expect me to live up to an image that I was not.
He wrote me notes and planned picnics. When he went away to officer candidate school we sent each other letters like our grandparents did.
He talked to me of the babies we would have and the children we would raise together.
He had a purposeful, adventurous plan for life and invited me to join him.
He thought my dreams, interests, and goals had meaning.
His t-shirts were nice to wear.
And I couldn’t imagine not seeing what life with him would be like. I couldn’t let someone else have that honor, and wonder for the rest of my days what it would have been like to be Jesse McKeeman’s wife.
Sometimes the four kids, his job, my housework, and how we have set this life up together isn’t enough anymore because I’m not just the woman that life has made me. I am still a girl who wants a boy to sweep her off her feet. I’m still a girl who wants to have something big to give him.
Scrambled eggs, strong arms, a sweet smile, and dreams are enough for that girl – I just have to remember how not to forget her because when I do I lose us.
Happy Anniversary my love, of course you were the one to marry. No other man could ever be to me what you are. I’m thankful to walk through life with you, and when I’m not walking well thanks for still being there – always.
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.
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Patricia Marshall - This took my breath away, Sharon. It is so beautifully written and filled with such truth and hope and faith. Thank you for sharing it!
sharon - Thank you Patricia! xoxo
Wanda Stauffer - Sharon, I appreciate your raw honesty as you process these difficult issues. I’ve lived my whole adult life without my parents so I know the desire to watch our children grow up and walk aisles since my parents did not have that opportunity. Every day with my kids is a gift.
My dad was confined to a wheelchair in the last few years of his life, so that’s another familiar territory to me. I pray for the Fathers sweet assurance and peace for you at this time. Keep writing as you are able.
sharon - So true that every day is a gift. Thank you for your sweet encouragement xoxo