Flesh...

A friend of mine is working on a manuscript about a single word of faith.  Not knowing anything more than that, I have thought about what such a manuscript would look like, how it would read.  And I have thought that I would like to special order my own single word of faith manuscript.  I bet the word I would choose would surprise my friend.  But I have spent much time thinking about the choice:  Flesh.

I am not trying to write about flesh, at least right now.  However, I do have some lines of thought I wish were explored for/explained to me about flesh.  I am not quite sure if it is possible to talk about flesh in the dichotomy of positive and negative, but that's what first came to mind:

Positives:

• Jesus took on flesh for us.
• Jesus understands our flesh.
• Jesus took our human flesh to glory.
• Our own flesh will be restored in glory.

Negatives:

• Flesh is our foe.
• Many types of sin are rooted in our flesh.
• Flesh confuses and misleads us.
• From the very first moment of life our flesh is dying.

I suppose I think about flesh a lot these days because I spend so very much time felled by my flesh.  It is getting harder and harder and harder for me to endure the waves of violent nausea.  Waves upon waves upon waves.

I have been waking up abruptly in the early morning with violent nausea.  I have become nauseous after eating mid-day.  And I am often nauseous around midnight.  Many more days than I care to consider, I am nauseous every waking and sleeping moment.

I do find it curious that in the dark, when there is no light outside, I am less able to endure the nausea.  I struggle to maintain any sensibility and often end up curled around Amos, whimpering nonsense.

For more than a week now, my abdomen has been so swollen that all of my men's lounge pants no longer fit.  I have just one large enough to bear wearing, which means I am mostly to be found in a ginormous nightgown covered by a hoodie.  Being in such clothing all the times only makes me desire to wear real clothing all the more.

Today, I went to fetch a prescription and some groceries.  I asked two people to go with me and tried calling four people to keep me company on the phone.  All six times, I struck out.  As I did with trying to get through my errands.  I fainted twice.  And wept the whole way home.  And whilst I put away the perishables.  And whilst I lay on the kitchen floor with my fluff-ball.

Try as I might to be positive, I do not believe it is unrealistic to think that I am at least beginning to meet the ending of the efficacy of the erythromycin.  The other day, my black bean soup stayed in my stomach for almost 24 hours.  That foul, fetid mess then making its way through my body brought back the innards misery that was my overwhelming daily existence prior to erythromycin.  I am afraid to face that again.

But the weakness of my flesh is not merely in the failings of my autonomic nervous system, but also in the frailty of my mind, the wildness of my emotions, the hurts in my heart, and the lies that still cloak my spirit.  My whole being that is my flesh is weak and broken and weary.  Every part of it draws me away from the truth and screams at me daily that there simply is no way I was ever "fearfully and wonderfully made."

I wonder how there could possibly be joy in flesh.
And I wonder what Jesus thought about His time on earth wrapped in it.