Let there be rest...

I did not technically get out of bed yesterday until after 10 PM. I was that tired. I still am, though I do not regret digging up bushes and such. I am mildly interested to note that the constant tendinitis in my elbows did not flare as much as I feared, but the spasticity in the back of my legs became most fierce.

I am supposed to be stretching them every day. However, the pain is so unbearable just to sit with my legs straight in front of me that I do not. I try from time to time, but when I really try, I faint from the agony. And when I do not faint, I hate my body so much that I simply avoid doing that which would help marginally.

Mostly, right now, I wish not to move my legs at all. Mostly, right now, I wish for a heavily muscled Gunther to be pommeling on the back of my legs to help with the misery. What I have, though, is an Amos, whose soft, fluffy, lavender-smelling warm body gives me comfort as I endure.

Still, I would do it again. In fact, my friend has more bushes she wants gone, but I think...hopefully...they will not be too difficult to do. Eventually.

I did have this primary thought about the yard work: Truth be told, I think the reason I dug up bushes on Sunday was that I was forced to use a motorized wheelchair shopping cart on Friday. I don't want to be that person. So, I was not so much serving my neighbor as I was a little girl having a petulant fit of temper over something she did not like.

Now that I have maneuvered one of those carts, I believe I will continue to use them.  I really have no choice in the matter some days.  Perhaps...sooner than I would like...most days.

I do not know, do not remember, if I have blogged yet about John the Baptist.  Nevertheless, I thought I would do so now, for in the past two months, I have been thinking deeply about him, about his life.  By this, I mean, I have been thinking deeply about him, about his life, whenever someone tells me that God will take care of me.

Sometimes I wonder at the things I never noticed, never pondered before I had to face such pain.  While I have blogged about the innards writhing, truly I have not yet found the words to paint an adequate picture, to truly give the reader real understanding.  More than the nausea and diarrhea and bloating and gas, to me, is the agony of the weight of anything--even the lightest material--on my abdomen.  Because I do not regulate my body temperature properly anymore, I cannot simply lie there naked.  Because of my past, mentally that would not be possible either.  In either case, it is not possible.  So, I try to prop my clothing and the bedding (I have covers on the bathroom floor as well) away from my body, but still try to stave off the agony of a cold spell.  It is a lose/lose situation.  The proverbial catch-22.  Yet the entire time, the entire battle of writhing from the disruption of my digestive processes, my mind is screaming that it is simply not possible that even the weight of sheer fabric can cause so much pain.  It is absolutely, positively not possible.  Yet it is.

All that is to say that whether it is my innards, the migraines, the chills, the arthritis, or the spasticity, I have become intimately acquainted with myriad types of oft near-unbearable pain.  That pain has given me food for thought. 

Because of my weakness and the wrong theology heaped upon me in the past, much of that pain-filled time is spent trying to figure out what I have done wrong, how I can be better.  Or I spend the time beating myself up for being so bothered by pain that is small in comparison to those suffering from, say, bone cancer.  But, of late, in between those two lines of thought, a third has emerged:

Jesus did not save John the Baptist from his pain, from his death. The one greater than any other man born of woman had his head cut off and served on a platter while Jesus walked the earth.  The one who heralded God' son to the world had his head cut off and served on a platter while Jesus walked the earth.  The one who baptized Jesus had his head cut off and served on a platter while Jesus walked the earth.

John had his head cut off and served on a platter because we live in a fallen world.  John had his head cut off and served on a platter because we cannot escape the fruit of the sin of others born in our own lives.  John had his head cut off and served on a platter because Jesus walked this earth.

Wait?  What?  I'm blaming Jesus?  No. I blame sin.  Sin stands against God, against the Living Word, against Emmanuel.  John happened to be alive when Jesus was walking about.  John happened to speak the truth of sin and of God.  So John happened to have this head cut off and served on a platter.

Jesus surely loved John.  John surely was very, very important to Him.  Yet Jesus did not prevent his humiliation.  Jesus did not spare him pain.  Jesus did not save his physical life.

Perhaps I am reaching a bit here. I am not, after all, a theologian, but I do not believe it is a coincidence that in the same address where Jesus tells how great John was, how much greater the least of those in the Kingdom of God is than John, He finishes by saying, "Come to Me, all who are weary and heaven-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy, and My load is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).  

Stewards of the mysteries of God.  My ways are not your Ways.  The yoke of the cross is easy and light.

I do not have the words for why I think about John being beheaded while Jesus was there to save him.  Nor, really, do I have the words for how that changes the moments of my pain.  And what I am trying to say here might seem to go against the theology of the cross when that is not my intention at all.  However, I shall still pen the words chasing themselves about my head at the moment:

Faith is not about suffering.

Faith is not about not suffering.

Faith is rest.  Rest that is having your head cut off and served on a platter.  Rest that is living your entire life without ever knowing great pain or suffering.  Rest that is struggling with barrenness.  Rest that is being showered with ten children. Rest that is riches.  Rest that is poverty.  

For is not the rest of Christ peace with God?  Is not the rest of Christ knowing that the hostilities between you and God have ceased in receiving faith?  Is not the rest of Christ being freed from the Law?

The faith of Jesus, His obedience to the Law in our place, meant that He suffered and died.  But the faith given to us--given in baptism, given in the hearing of the Living Word, given taking in the body and blood of Christ, given by the Holy Spirit--is not suffering.  It is peace.  It is rest.  

I mentioned Betsie Ten Boom a while ago, in thinking about the importance of perspective.  In thinking about faith, I am reminded of her again.  There, in Ravensbruck concentration camp, Betsie was surrounded by the hostilities between man and God, surrounded by the ravages of sin on our fallen world.  Yet, even as her body was sub-coming to those ravages, she was at rest.  Point of fact, though, Betsie was also at rest before Hitler ever took power in Germany.

Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!