When I Am Weak, Part 2

Further reflections on a bizarre season

This turned into a 4-part miniseries: part 1, part 2, part 3, and a coda.

Last piece, I told a bit of our story from this past year and shared some of the things these changes have had me reflecting and meditating on.

Three quick notes

First, It’s gonna be three pieces, not two. I promise I’ll stop there though.

Second, I’ve deliberately used “weak” and tried to avoid words like “suffering.” I’ve had no pain or injury; I’m not fighting for my life; and while I am physically diminished and inconvenienced, we have reasonable hope that medicine and PT will restore some of what I’ve lost. I haven’t wanted to cheapen either good English words or the experience of people who are going through much harder things than we are. If suffering is a pool that runs from a toddler section to Olympic-diving-depth, we’re still splashing on the kids’ side of the floaty blue rope.

If you’re genuinely hurting, the first thing I’d recommend is finding a solid church (and I’d be happy to try to help you do that wherever you live; reply or email me). Joni Eareckson Tada, who has lived with severe disability and pain for decades, has an amazing book called When God Weeps that I can’t recommend highly enough, and also some great talks and resources on her website. Tim Keller has a great book on walking with God through pain and suffering too, and I mentioned Mark Vroegop’s book on lament last piece.

And third, I’ve used words like “reflections” and “meditations” on purpose as well. There are some eternal truths I’ve been meditating on here and some human ones I think are sound, but I’m not calling these “lessons” because that conveys a finality or completion, and I’m very much thinking through things. These are what’s on my mind now.

Laughter as heart medicine

A sampling of things I was not experiencing before this time:

• I currently eat with the speed of an elderly woman with extremely Southern manners, and the table noises of an elderly man with none.

• After a few minutes of speaking, sometimes my voice sounds like Darth Vader imitating Kermit the Frog.

• I walk fine during the day, but at night and early mornings I move like Lurch after he’s hit the punch bowl too hard.

• We bought a king-size bed, but our queen mattress is still on the floor of the bedroom. The other night Allison moved to it because, in her words, “Your night throat noises unsettled me.”

• I recently read Peter’s exhortation for husbands to honor their wives as the weaker vessel (he means physically). The day before, I had taken Allison a jelly jar to open for me.

• My son asked me to show him how high I can lift my arms (almost shoulder height). We spent the next minutes with him pushing my arm higher and laughing, “Come on! You can do it!”

Do we spend our whole day slapping our thighs and cracking witticisms? Absolutely not. And I’m naturally neutral when it comes to humor – I love to laugh, but don’t naturally go to laughter or think of jokes. But finding humor or irony where we can helps me avoid the extremes of self-pity and prideful rage, and keeps me in the healthy humble zone. We’ve been looking for ways to laugh and otherwise have a good time, and it’s been good for us. Like the Proverb says, “A joyful heart is good medicine.”

(side note: you’d think “humor” came from the Latin root humus and so connected more directly to “humility;” it comes from a word for “fluid” instead, but is a happy coincidence in English. Also, the history of the humor theory of health and personality makes for entertaining reading)

Francis of Assissi called his body “Brother Ass,” by which he meant “donkey” (but it’s funnier now!). CS Lewis has a great reflection on it, which you can find in this good talk on stewarding the body:

Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now a stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body.

When I’m more aware than ever that I’m on Brother Ass, embracing the absurd helps the ride.

Embracing Interdependence

American rhetoric fantasizes independence, and many of our cultural norms promote it too – living alone, isolated consumption, high pressure on independent achievement and entertainment over shared spaces and projects. But this is simultaneously historically unnatural, bad for us, and not how actual human life works.

We are invariably interdependent beings, from birth through death. We’re made to need others, from individual family members and neighbors to the global economy and supply chains that enable us to eat (because you don’t live on no self-sustaining farm).

The last few months have made me profoundly aware of the inevitable interdependence: at times with humility (not being able to dress myself), at times with an appreciation of the absurd (the jelly jar), and at times with simple gratitude. Our families have served us in unbelievable ways. Our church community have made us meals, gotten a van tire patched. My four-year-old helps me put on my socks when my feet aren’t too Stay-Puft for shoes. The early Church was unique in the Roman Empire for taking the basic human unit of the family and extending that interdependence to former strangers, even across ethnic lines, in Christ (see here). Interdependence is risky, but it’s how human life works, and embracing that makes us more human and enables us to accept the gifts and challenges of community.

I don’t know if anyone has called this Bonhoeffer’s paradox yet, but in Life Together he describes both how we do stand alone, and also stand together. I won’t post the “alone” bit in the interest of space (you can read it here), but here’s the “together” bit:

Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.

Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ. If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you. “If I die, then I am not alone in death; if I suffer, they [the fellowship] suffer with me” (Luther).

You need others. I need others. Interdependence is necessary, beautiful, and worth the cost.

Grace is “spiritual” and also physical

Grace, or undeserved love, is one of the highest values of Christianity. It drives God’s love for us sinners, from his covenantal fidelity to Israel through Jesus’ atoning for our sins on the Cross to the Spirit making a home in our souls. It’s a “spiritual” reality in the sense that it seals us to the God who is Spirit and in that it comes to us from the Spirit.

But these circumstances have reminded me that grace is extremely physical as well – it is and must be incarnated, made flesh, as Jesus himself was. And Jesus tells us this:

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25:34-40)

God’s grace saves us, not our own; but here Jesus tells his people, you got grace – they understood it by incarnating it to others. The spiritual virtue of grace led them to physical acts of service to others.

I’ve listed them already, but I have experienced so much grace in the last few months: not just from God, but from Allison and my kids and our family and our church community. The physical helps we have received are incarnations of a divine love I don’t deserve.

All the Poor and Powerless

The Advent season is a time of both celebration (all the cheery stuff) and longing, because while God has come into the world to bring his kingdom, the work isn’t done yet, and we will groan while we wait.

Our church does an Advent music special in December (if you’re in Birmingham you should try to get a ticket, but be warned - they sell out crazy fast!). We didn’t write this song, but it’s been part of the service before and I love it.

Photo by Kunj Parekh on Unsplash