The perfect word...

For me the perfect word is always the Living Word.  Pick a psalm, any psalm, and the power of the Living Word will penetrate the moment and carry me along.  These days, I also very much long to hear John 1:1-5.  But sometimes the perfect word can be a Gospel of sorts that is outside the Living Word.

Tonight, I had such a perfect word.

I am once again writhing on the bathroom floor.  That my bathroom is now beautiful should make it somewhat more bearable.  It has actually been more than a week, I believe, since I have writhed. So I should be grateful, right? I think.

My new friend is a nurse and does not mind me talking medical stuff.  Since she works nights and has a baby, her sleeping schedule is strange like mine.  As a result, we sometimes chat early morning.  Lately, when I am in pain or am ill, I become very frightened.  So, I reach out by text or chat, rather desperately hoping that someone will be awake.  That I will not be alone in that moment.

Tonight, I sent a chat message to her: Writhing. Wonder if it is something I ate or just random. It's been a while, so I should be grateful, but I'm not.

Her message back was the perfect word:  I don't think we are ever happy to have pain come back. Its absence does not make a heart fonder, even if we ought to be grateful for being spared a little. 

I have been working for a while at not shoulding on myself.  To be perfectly blunt, the person who had been helping me understand things once said that shoulding on other people is like shitting on them.  Telling someone what he or she should or should not do is to oppress him, is to kill her...kill his feelings, her thoughts, to deny the validity of the moment he is living.  It is law.  And there is never life in law.

In my friend's response there is no law.  There is only freedom.  Freedom to feel wretched.  Freedom to suffer.  And freedom to dislike that suffering, to not be grateful for it.

I have yet to hear a Lutheran pastor teach about the first chapter of James...about what I learned as law for Christians: consider it joy when you suffer.  A command.  And if you are not the joyful suffering saint, you have not faith.  SIGH.  Oh, the anguish of that particular failure of faith!  After all, it is usually a public failure, which makes it a double failure for not being a good enough witness for Christ.  DOUBLE SIGH.

Recently, I spent time with someone who shoulds all the time.  All. The. Time.  And so I, rather understandably, black slid.  I was talking with my dear friend Wynne yesterday, and she noted that I was shoulding on myself again when I had done such a good job of getting away from that in the past two months.  SIGH.  Though I am working on being gentle with myself when I make mistakes or back slide.

Here I am, ill and in pain, and my Good Shepherd provides a perfect word for me through my new friend.  She gave me the freedom to call my suffering suffering, without placing me under the law of needing to praise God for such a thing in the moment.

I really would love to have the Lutheran teaching on James.  I mean, I am suffering because my body is not working as God designed it to be.  And this is not because God is inflicting some sort of penance for my faltering faith.  This is because I live in a fallen world and sin permeates and twists everything. How can James be taught at Gospel, since it sounds so very Law-ish.  Do this.  Doing is never Gospel for Jesus has already done all that is needful and it is His faith that we are given, that is accounted to us for justification.

Regardless of the proper division of Law and Gospel for that particular bit of Living Word, I wanted to note this:  From where I stand (or, rather, am lying at the moment), what few understand is that when facing someone who are deeply wounded, struggling, ill, or otherwise overwhelmed, you need not have to figure out what to say to him.  Give her a perfect word.  Read the Living Word to him.  And speak to her the freedom to feel, to think, to struggle in the moment.  Tell him, that it is okay to simply be as he is in that moment.  For no matter how we are--suffering or at peace, full of faith or hanging on by a mere thread--we are still loved, we are still forgiven, and we are still not alone.


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!