She rubbed her eyes and I rubbed mine. We had finished our nighttime routine of prayers, medicine, stretching. As she shared about her pain in her legs, I found myself drifting off to sleep while sitting up, back against the wall, feet dangling over her bottom bunk bed. Not for lack of caring; simply from the reality of exhaustion. Our daughter’s healing journey was going into its fifth month, but it felt like its fiftieth.
I jolted back to consciousness with an abrupt neck snap. I listened more, soothed more, held hands more. I eyed the clock and reminded her of our cut-off time, the agreed upon hour when I needed to get into my bed and she needed to lay in the stillness of her room, waiting for sleep to come. I prayed tonight wouldn’t be one of crying herself to sleep.
We giggled about Carl Sandburg’s fog coming over the harbor on little cat’s feet and wondered if sleep would come with cat or elephant feet, squirrel or cheetah ones. I just begged the Good Lord to send sleep to her in any way, shape, or form. Something to seal her waking mind from her incessant pain. Anything to silence it.
She shared about her plans to go to school four days in one week before it was over. I praised her big dreaming and we strategized about how that could happen. I kissed her good night, stepped out of her shared room with her younger brother, and leaned my back against the closed door. The hallway piles of unfolded laundry gave me a solemn nod. My hands pressed against my eyes. A few wet fingers wiped on my bathrobe. That kid bathroom across the hall needs to be cleaned, I resolved. Maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow if she’s in school.
+ + +
Many things that need healing have a definite end. The broken arm is healed. The broken heart has moved on. The broken fence is replaced. But some sorts of healing have ambiguous endings, or kinda a trailer ending, literally one that trails on and on. And her post-infectious syndrome condition seemed to fall in the latter camp, the we-don’t-know-when-it’s-over-til-it’s-over scenario. The unspecific answer that no one wants to sit around waiting for.
But maybe I oversimplify healing. The broken arm is never the same, those tissues and bones knit back together differently, always a vulnerable spot. The broken heart faces the temptation to ruminate, to harken back to the better-old-love-days when the new love grows normal and everyday. And a fence will break over and over again because nothing is made to last (except styrofoam apparently? will it ever break down in the garbage dump? 10,000 years?). Maybe healing is never finished. Maybe its very nature is a continuum of worse to better, with best being briefly touched upon at a high-level guardian angel meeting every third month on the third. Oh yes, that kid, yes, well she’s better from this, but now we’re heading into that.
My heart is too quiet right now to have ups and downs, hopes high or hopes dashed regarding when our sweet girl will be 100%. When she’ll be pain-free. When she’ll sleep normal lengths and normal intervals. My heart sits with her each night, holding the hand of her heart, and murmurs, I know. I know, honey, I know.
+ + +
It would be easy to say it’s been the hardest school year to date. That would be accurate. It also would be easy to say I wish it hadn’t happened, her falling sick, so sick, the difficulty diagnosing and then treating, the battle for her energy and spirits to stay upward, the hours working on endurance to get back to school, the unexpected canceling of anything and everything because of a rock-face cliff of a night or early morning. But I wouldn’t wish it all away.
Her sickness and journey toward healing, her opening of her clenched heart to grace, moving from holding my hand to receive God’s tender touch, is transforming us all. You don’t get the healing without the hurting. No dawn without darkness. No elation without the reverberation of defeat.
Are you waiting for healing? The hidden healing? The obvious healing? Have you asked, bargained, begged, pleaded? Have you given up asking or caring? Has it begun but stalled out, not ended, no period to put at the end of the sentence?
We’ve covered a lot of healing ground this month; we’ve talked about His timing versus ours, that we’re free from chasing approval or affirmation, that even our disappointment holds the ground open for us to experience the everything that is God’s love. But today is my invitation to believe that God wants healing and will give it, but more than that, He desires unity with us. And that those are related.
He has His plan. Healing’s part of it. Unity with Him is all of it. And if our family had moved on quickly from this atrocious and awful suffering, we would not be as close with Him. (Kicking and screaming range close, if you know what I mean, like hey buddy, it’s hard and if we’re close enough to have it be this hard, You’re going to hear about it.)
When she is better and pain-free, she will encounter more hardship, other trials, different crosses. What my mind really wanted from the beginning was for this suffering to be done, for this inconvenience of pausing all our lives to be swept aside, and for us to be able to praise God for a specific healing in specific space and specific time. Something to point to, “He did this for us!” and an assurance that this miraculous healing would mean no more pain ever. He didn’t think that was the best path for me, clearly, or it would have happened. Best path meaning closest to Him.
If that which you want healing from hasn’t or isn’t bringing you closer to Love, then maybe you’re missing out on an opportunity. This might grate your heart. You might not be ready to hear it. That’s okay. I wasn’t for the early months, the scariest months. But your choice and mine is this: our circumstances invite us closer to Love if we want them to. Do we want them to? Instead of healing as a defined destination, a clean bill of health in our case, what if healing is unity with Love? Then we’re already there.
I choose Love Itself, over and over. Sometimes I have to stop mid-shouting at my kids to remind myself that I chose and choose Love. Will you, too? Begin again. Nunc coepi.
In this together,
Nell
Oh - Amen I whisper quietly. He wants healing, but closeness to Him is where the true healing will be found. How many times has this healing looked so very different than I wanted, and yet, He is always good when we surrender ourselves, our pain, our tears, into His arms. Thank you for this series. 💕
Nunc coepi again and again. I love the idea that healing is unity with love, and we can choose it in any moment.