If You've Ever Felt Your Dreams Crush Against Disappointment (Part 2)
This is that continuation I promised from the last blog post I did. You know, two weeks later than planned. ;)
We were
sitting outside the hospital cafeteria in the sunshine, the air uncommonly
sticky for California. My husband and I were trying to keep busy, to do
something besides think and feel. My eyes were swollen, evidence that I was not
as collected or as calm as I might have looked sitting there skimming through
my phone.
Just fifteen
minutes prior, I watched my almost-three-year old get wheeled towards the
operating room. And even though it was a minor outpatient procedure, I am not
so sure any procedure feels like a minor amount of weight on a momma’s heart.
It made me
think of how when us kids would talk of leaving home or of grand global
adventures, my mom would wrap us up in her arms and with both laughter and
sadness in her eyes she would declare, “Oh, no. I don’t think I can let you do
that. My apron strings just don’t reach that far.”
The gorilla-sized
tears and the ache in my stomach seemed to indicate that my apron strings didn’t reach operating rooms. The nurse had told me not to worry, that Jed was
in good hands. But the truth is, I wanted Jed in my hands.
While we
were sitting, waiting, Mike was listening to an interview of Jim Caviezel on
accepting the role of Jesus in the Passion
of the Christ. I wasn’t paying much attention. I may have even thought to
myself what a random thing to listen to at this exact moment. Wasn’t that a decade ago?
But then Jim
Caviezel said something that settled on my ears and demanded my attention.
“We all want resurrection; nobody wants
suffering.”
Five minutes
later, my husband got a call from the doctor. He asked for us to return to the
room.
Somehow Mike
instinctively knew to go without me. He insisted that I stay and that he would
call me if I was needed. I sat attempting to write about Caviezel’s truth nugget,
but really all I could think about was Jed.
Mike came
back after the longest ten minutes. While prepping Jed for surgery, the doctor
discovered something else that needed surgery… something that was more
important and pressing than the original procedure for which we had scheduled
Jed.
So, in
total, my baby got three procedures done in one surgery. Three incisions, three
bandages, three wounds from which to recover.
{In case you’ve
been counting, that third one was a minor one that they asked if they could do
when we first arrived, and another story altogether.}
I felt
grateful that we had taken him in and that Jed was being spared from a much
bigger problem later on all because of this doctor’s keen eye.
I wanted Jed
better. But I didn’t want him to suffer.
But even my
momma heart knew that I had to let him go, that the better meant the suffering.
Because it’s
true: “We all want resurrection; [but] nobody wants suffering.”
I don’t
fully understand suffering. I have a really long list of questions for God about
suffering that begin with the word “Why.”
But Christ, he
suffered. Lashings, beatings, thorns scraping skull, nails like railroad spikes
into wrists and feet, and then he died. And when the stench of death would have
just began to take him, when hope would have seemed lost, when resignation
would have held Christ’s followers… Jesus resurrected.
Like the
barley kernel at the back drop of the story of Ruth: cut down, trampled under
the feet of donkeys, and crushed under stones, and just when the barley kernel
might have felt like it’s purpose was done for, like it was crushed beyond recognition,
the harvester threw it into the air and a beautiful usable kernel fell to the
ground to be carried off to the mill for flour.
Because God plants beautiful purposes in chaffy
human hearts.
It is
through trials and pain and times that feel hopeless that separate the kernel
of purpose from the human shell it lies in. And God doesn’t abandon us in our
hardest times, he is waiting for that separation of chaff and dream, of human
and spirit so that He can raise back up to life. Crushing and raising up are
both important processes and equally dependent upon the other. Crushing seems cruel
without the raising up; raising up is pointless without the crushing.
Perhaps, we
would like to think that our holiness is wrapped up in substance of our ideals,
our dreams. I remembered being a rosy-cheeked newlywed full of “holy” dreams, of two
sharing the gospel together, of raising children, of a house that could be full
of God’s love. But our holiness is something that comes about in the refining
fire of when our reality and our dreams don’t match. Holiness is wrought in the struggle, in the surrender, in the telling
God that I choose Him over all of it, even over my best-intentioned dreams.
That I want Him and all of Him and there isn’t a thing here in this life that
could possibly compare to the goodness of simply knowing Him. That He is God
and I am woman and while I don’t understand His ways, surely I can choose to
accept that I won’t comprehend them but that I can TRUST Him.
This is probably
not the most fun material to read. The truth is, it’s not just suffering that
proceeds resurrection; it’s death that
proceeds resurrection. And this is hard. It’s hard to listen to, and it’s a
thousand times harder to walk through. But I can say when you surrender, lay that dream
on the altar, I do believe I can echo Paul with absolute certainty: God is
exceedingly and abundantly able to do above and beyond all that you ask or
think…. And that no human heart can conceive the things God has prepared for
those who love Him. (Ephesian 3:20 & 1 Corinthians 2:9)
Amen.
By Grace,
Amanda
Conquers
