A woman dear to me is in agony of spirit.  She is struggling and battling to cling to life.  She does not have the support she needs from her husband and she does not have the support she needs from the body of Christ of which she is a part.

Of late, I have heard quoted several times the analogy Luther uses for the importance of all members of the body, though I have not found it myself.  He is described as teaching this by pointing out how when we injure even a little toe, the whole body bends over in agony.  Thus, all members of the body are important.  But the body of Christ to which she belongs does not value her, does not really see her anguish.

She has sought help from the medical community, but for some inexplicable reason the doctors have not seen her anguish either.  She has been dismissed and ignored even as she has spoken of her desperation and desire to depart this life.

Just before a day, an anniversary, that is most particularly difficult for her to bear, I asked three confessional Lutheran pastors if they would write to her.  I know not what they said, only that she received the letters.  She has not spoken of them except to say she is not sure how she feels about receiving them.  I asked because what she needs, more than anything else in the entire world, is the sweet, sweet Gospel.  Trust me, this I know intimately.

She also needs to be loved, to be cherished, championed, and forgiven (remember this is how I think love should be...but of late I have come to believe that I know nothing of love...absolutely nothing).  She needs to be nurtured and tended to with patience and great generosity as often as it takes for as long as it takes.  And she needs the support medical care can provide.

At times, all she seems to have in this life is me.  A pathetic resource, if you ask me. 

This weekend, she is coming to visit for a brief time.  Since she is coming with me to Divine Service, she will, I happen to think, have the Gospel poured over her for the first time.  I tried to explain about closed communion and that she could go forward for a blessing.  Oh, how I want that for her,  knowing how powerful it can be to have the cross traced upon your forehead in a time when you are feeling most wretched, utterly filthy in your sin.  But, when I mentioned this to her, she said that she was not in a good enough place in her relationship with God to be receiving anything from Him.

My heart broke at reading those words and I began weeping for her.  I know how she feels. I know those haunting thoughts, those assaults and accusations full well.  I want so badly to pour the sweet, sweet Gospel over her, to sing over her, to wash her wounds with the Living Word and the pure teaching Lutheran doctrine that brings absolute freedom from such thought.  She can never be worthy; her worthiness is precisely in understanding this.  His grace is objective.  Justification comes solely through the cross.

I tried to explain how God sees her only through Christ and that through Christ, even now, in this very moment, she is blameless and spotless and without sin.  But who am I to even type such words?  What do I know of the Gospel other than its siren call to me, its ability, as it falls upon my ears, to sooth me in a way nothing else does?

I tried reading a Catechism book to chase down answers to some of the questions I have filling my mind. In reading the lesson, there were/are still questions to which I do not understand the answer.  And then there is the condemnation of the Law.  The first commandment crushes me, leaves me gasping on the ground, hopeless in the knowledge of my unbelief and doubt, how very often I do not expect good things from Him...at least not now, not until heaven.

How do you handle being crushed by the Law when the Gospel seems to pale in comparison to that weight?

I have been trying to tackle Acts, but what others write/say about it is not what I am reading.  I think, how do they see that?  Why am I missing so much?  I have a blooming Ph.D., reading a book of the bible, piecing together the time line and travels ought not to be so hard.  SIGH.  But it is.  Oh how I hate what this disease is doing to my brain!

I have no business speaking the Gospel to this woman.  None.  But she doesn't have anyone else.  She doesn't have anyone else because there simply is no place for the wounded in this life.  We want to send them off someplace to be "fixed."  We decide what they need and then grow angry when they do not agree or do not follow the path we have laid out.  We do not want to sit beside them in their tears, in their anguish, and bear patiently that burden.  It is too heavy.  Too much of a sacrifice.  In the choices of life, holding the heart of a deeply wounded, troubled person is simply not a choice you make.  Even in Church.  Especially in Church.

Her mother was wounded in a different way.  her mother was judged, shunned, and then ignored right up until the point when she died...she died because no one saw her, no one believed her when she tried again and again to speak of the symptoms of her illness until it was too late, until the brain tumor was too large.  Her mother was the woman who didn't always make the acceptable choices.  She was the woman who was awkward.  She was the woman who was difficult.  She was the woman who was a bother.  She was the woman who was draining.  She was the woman whom you leave by the side of the road because you have others to tend to, others that you choose to care about, care for...others.

This woman's struggles are different from her mother's, but imprinted on her heart is the knowledge that the loving, Christian woman who raised her and cared for her the best she could was judged, shunned, and ignored until she died.  She has tried to prove the world different, tried to prove the body of Christ different.  She has shown more courage than I could ever fathom in trying to find help.  Thus far, however, for her, there is none.  Instead, there is only more heartache, more trials, more deprivation.  She places one foot in front of the other, walking such a terrible path without hope, without a future, because she is a mother and has no other choice.  And she is doing so attending a church where she is erroneously taught that her faith is in her own hands and that her struggles are only what she deserves for not being a better Christian, a better wife, a better mother.

Oh, how my heart aches for her and how I struggle to understand why the care of the Church is categorized so, skewed toward those burdens acceptable to carry, those people we want to help.

I have a day and a half in which to somehow manage to give her Gospel despite my own failings, my own struggles, my own confusion in trying to learn how to be acceptable.  May the Holy Spirit give me the Word to plant in her rocky, barren soil of a life that even there it may grow and blossom into a salve that will cover her wounds, heal her heart, and give her the strength she needs to sustain the life our Creator has given her.


Lord, we are Yours.  Save her!  Save me!