I have a splitting headache this morning. Part of this is due to sinuses responding none too kindly to the rain currently dotting the Bay Area, micromanaging the micro-climates to where my current earthly home is doing its best impersonation of my other earthly home in Indiana. There, if you don’t like the weather wait five minutes and it’ll change. Here you travel five miles.
The main reason for my throbbing cranium is a lack of sleep last night courtesy of dreams that were anything but dreamy. They were haunted by the nocturnal twistings of what was already tangled: dealing with my aunt the previous evening when her dementia was running wild, paranoid utterances coming at a rapid clip even as she was forgetting what had been told her thirty seconds earlier. It’s strange how in the 3 AM playhouse items that are connected in some fashion to reality transform into bizarre worlds of the impossible while feeling perfectly normal. At least until you wake up and try to make sense of the performance’s last few flickers of light still screaming inside your head.
It’s hard watching a loved one fade away. I suspect most all reading this can nod their head in sad common knowledge, having been there and done that. It drains you, a different kind of drain than what takes place when the burdens of you living your life become oppressive. I’ve heard it said how it’s hard to raise your hands in praise when once you lower them they go into empty pockets. More directly put, when you’re unsettled financially as far as whether there’ll be a job for you tomorrow if in fact you have one today you get scared. Yes, consider the lilies of the field and all that. It’s still human to be nervous in troubled times. Sometimes you want to receive direct reassurance that it’ll be all right. When it comes to loved ones making a slow departure said reassurances, even should the person be a believer, can be scarce.
Worse yet, some believe themselves to be failures for feeling this way.
Somewhere along the line, we need to hear how the pursuit of holiness does not translate into beating ourselves up for being something other than the epitome of Supersaint Inc. We do hurt. We do bleed. We do get scared, and angry, and all the other emotions those who believe being a Christian translates into being a Spirit-filled Mr. Spock say we shouldn’t be experiencing.
We need to huddle close together and help each other as best we can, for we are all we have on this earth. We need to spend less time wearing “and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose” as an umbrella and more time remembering Solomon’s words “no one can comprehend what goes on under the sun.” Perhaps then we can be the witness we are called to be, not as the all-conquering and all-knowing but as the one who’s unafraid to admit they don’t know everything but this one thing is known: Jesus is real and alive, and even though you still get smacked around love wins in the end. There is healing from the hurt. There is life beyond what we know.
Which is a good thing.
In the meanwhile, let’s admit we’re human. When we do so, we allow ourselves the privilege of interacting with other humans based on the common experiences of life. And when despite your humanity you stubbornly cling to the nail-pierced hand, reflecting both Christ’s love and pain, you immediately become far more beautiful to Him than you’ve ever believed possible.
