This Too Shall Last

by K. J. Ramsey

  Christ is taking all that was cursed and is re-creating it as blessed. By inhabiting the place of the curse and inhabiting it now in us by his Spirit, Christ is redeeming every inch of scorched earth through our stories finding their home in his.

  By being born, Christ affirmed the body as the place where God is present. By growing up, he established obedience to the slow, painful work of maturity and development, showing us slow growth is sacred. As Scottish theologian T. F. Torrance points out, when Luke tells us that “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature,”21 he is using a Greek word that describes Christ’s growth as a struggle, perhaps more accurately translated as “he had to beat his way forward by blows.”22 Jesus’ obedience included his submission to the ordinary, painful way we humans have to develop, learn, and grow, and it included battling the genuine human nature he assumed into willing obedience to God’s will. We want to be whole without work, but even Jesus had to grow in wisdom in invisible, repetitious, mundane ways to curve human nature back to God’s will.23

  Our lives have been knit into the history of the entire people of God, including Jesus, and as we present our bodies as a sacrifice and meeting place with Christ, love slowly becomes our language and orienting reality. In Christ our lives are pulled into a reality greater than death and decay, a faithfulness that infuses the dirt of our suffering with the breath of life. A Christian is a person whose life has been expanded, whose memory has been extended thousands of years beyond their own, and whose present is enveloped by the presence of Love. Whether we feel or recognize it, even in suffering—especially in suffering—God intersects our lives with his presence, and his presence is always enfolding us farther into the reality of his certain, steadfast kingdom of love.

  This was Jesus’ mission: “to take to Himself and reclaim (‘assume’) every aspect of ordinary human life and turn it back to the Father as a place for communion.”24 In his body, in his trust, in his emotion, in his pain, he is taking every aspect of being human and turning it to the Father to be held by his love. In our bodies, in our trust, in our emotions, in our pain, Christ is reviving every atom of humanness that was broken by the fall. We participate in the life of the world to come, then, not simply by pining after suffering’s eradication but by abiding in Christ in our weakness every time our feet hit rocky ground.

  Today I woke with a groan, those first morning movements—the tilt of the head, the shift of fingers under cotton sheets—an immediate screech of pain. Usually it fades to a quiet drone, but today it’s as thunderous as the steaming water filling my bathtub, where I stand, drawing my fourth bath of the week to relieve pain at an hour when most adults are midway through their morning’s work. Stepping into the glimmering blue water, with the iridescent outline of bubbles cratered under the faucet, I hope the heat will hold the weight of my frustration. I’m choosing gentleness, but I’d rather not be in pain at all. I’d rather not be here at all.

  I run a washcloth under cold water to cool my flushed, sweating face. Holding it there, cold drops stream down into hot tears. Is this a taste of Christ’s blood-like sweat in the garden of Gethsemane? Could the agony of pain, my small, solitary pain in a bathtub in a bungalow somehow fill up what is lacking in his suffering? As the cool water mingles with my tears, my suffering mingles with the suffering of Christ. In the garden, he pleaded for the cup to pass—oh, how much I’d love for this cyclical part of my story to cease—but he trusted his Father’s will. For the joy set before him, for the love that would enfold me and you into his relationship with the Father and Spirit, he said, “Not what I will, but what you will.”25

  And as the steam settles in this small bathroom, and pain presses farther into my day, his trust becomes mine. I dry off, knowing grace will meet me, whether in bed or at my desk, in work or in rest, in acceptance of pain or in its relief.

  Alone, I’d wallow. I’d hide forsaken in my heart like an inmate, counting the days God has left the child he supposedly loves be limited and lame. Doesn’t wallowing often seem easier than remembering?

  But I’m not alone; we’re not alone. Christ’s agony and trust infuse mine with a potency I lack. And as I remember him, these hard moments tingle with recognition. I have been united with Christ. He is present. Here. Now.

  Your suffering may not drive you to a bathtub several times a week to relieve physical pain. It might not limit your ability to work, or maybe it does. But your suffering probably carries the same shrill cry of agony and the temptation to give up on God as mine. Your suffering probably haunts you with anger and sadness for all the wrong you seem to disproportionately carry. Your suffering probably repeats the pattern of fear-to-faith in more days and hours than you’d like, enfolding you in a dependence that can both dissolve and develop joy.

  In the place of your weakness, Jesus stands secure in the Father’s love for you. In the circumstances and memories that drive us to doubt, Jesus never wavers in remembering we are loved by God. And when we allow our tears, agony, and desire for relief to remind us of his, we are filled with Christ’s memory of God’s faithfulness. In moments when doubt could lead us down a dark road, sharing our grief with the Savior who willingly suffered fills us with faith to trust again. It’s grace for the moment, grace to rise. Grace that holds us together like bubbles on bathwater, a beauty formed in tension rather than its absence.

  In our mundane, repetitive moments of suffering, Christ’s memory of living faithfully, of trusting the Father, of being loved, can be formed in us, turning stories that include suffering into stories of communion.

  Suffering does not have to be a barrier. It can be a continual reminder that there is no part of your life where Christ is not present. There is no place too low for him to stoop. There is no part of your body too inconvenient for him to love. There is no place in your memory too dark for him to hold. There is no weakness too recurring for Christ to care for. He is patient, and he is present. Christ is holding us together by the power of his Spirit, wrapping scarred hands securely around the most shattered pieces of our stories, carrying them with care because he chose to be shattered first, and placing them perfectly alongside his own into a mosaic of glory.

  So may you have courage to pay attention to him and to your life. May you have courage to join Christ in your place of weakness—as a place he is working and redeeming and filling with meaning—rather than trying to escape it, numb it, or name it as worthless. For in this place, he is present. In this, the place of your weakness, his power is perfected.

  NOTES

  1 George C. Kaplan and Mary Main, “Adult Attachment Interview” (unpublished manuscript, 3rd ed., Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 1996).

  2 Ps. 1:3.

  3 Rom. 12:2.

  4 Bessel van der Kolk, “How Trauma Lodges in the Body,” interview with Krista Tippett, On Being, March 9, 2017, podcast audio, https://onbeing.org/programs/bessel-van-der-kolk-how-trauma-lodges-in-the-body/.

  5 Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2010), 136.

  6 Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 170.

  7 The following section draws from the insights of Curt Thompson in Anatomy of the Soul, 65–78.

  8 John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, vol. 1, Attachment (New York: Basic, 1982).

  9 Eric Johnson, God and Soul Care: The Therapeutic Resources of the Christian Faith (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 65.

  10 Hebb was likely the first to propose this concept, but the phrase appears to be first used by Carla Shatz in 1992. See Donald Hebb, The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory (New York: J. Wiley, 1949). See also Carla J. Shatz, “The Developing Brain,” Scientific American 267, no. 3 (1992): 60–67.

  11 Curt Thompson discusses this at length as well. See chapter 8 of Anato
my of the Soul, “Earned Secure Attachment: Pointing to the New Creation.”

  12 Johnson, God and Soul Care, 175.

  13 Ibid., 66.

  14 Gal. 5:22–23.

  15 Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (New York: Bantam, 2011), 26–30.

  16 Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul, 170.

  17 To help you practice finding security in the One whose brain is always balanced and whose heart is always kind, I recommend reading Curt Thompson’s Anatomy of the Soul and carefully walking through each of the exercises he includes throughout the book. Another excellent resource for learning how to relate to yourself and God from a place of security is Boundaries for Your Soul by Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2018). I also cannot more strongly recommend seeking the help of a trained therapist, counselor, or spiritual director. Everyone needs the help of a counselor at some point in their life. To seek counseling is not weakness; rather, it is a courageous response to the God who valued your life enough to die for you. Seeking help will be worth the effort.

  18 1 Cor. 2:16.

  19 Martin Luther writes, “This is the principal thing and the principal treasure in every Gospel. Christ must above all things become our own and we become his. . . . The Gospel does not merely teach about the history of Christ. No, it enables all who believe it to receive it as their own, which is the way the Gospel operates.” Martin Luther, “Sermon for Christmas Day: Luke 2:1–14,” in The Sermons of Martin Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Lutherans in All Lands, 1906), 1521–22.

  20 Theologian Christian Kettler writes, “Jesus believes when I am unable to believe. Jesus acts when I am unable to act. Jesus loves when I am unable to love. Jesus forgives when I am unable to forgive. Jesus lives when I am dead in my sins. That is the power of truth become personal, the power of a vicarious life.” Christian Kettler, The God Who Believes: Faith, Doubt, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2005), 102.

  21 Luke 2:52.

  22 T. F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 64.

  23 The best, most succinct treatment I have found on the humanity of Christ and its import for our ordinary lives is Julie Canlis’ small book A Theology of the Ordinary (Wenatchee, WA: Godspeed, 2017). I’m indebted to her wisdom, especially in this section.

  24 Canlis, A Theology of the Ordinary, 30.

  25 Mark 14:36.

  CHAPTER 8

  PERSONAL PRESENCE

  The Sacrament of Bearing Witness

  Understand that your suffering is a task that, if handled correctly, with the help of others, will lead to enlargement, not diminishment.

  —DAVID BROOKS, THE SECOND MOUNTAIN

  The flame of individual faith weakens when it is alone, but in true community the fire of faith illumines the night.

  —KELLY M. KAPIC, EMBODIED HOPE

  The inconvenient but hopeful truth is that no one can enfold their life into the story of God redeeming all things without other Christians telling and witnessing their story with them. None of us can dwell in the tension of the narrative of redemption without others holding that tension with us.

  We cannot keep paying attention to our lives and the life of God within them without others willingly witnessing our weakness.

  The burden of suffering is too great. The pain of loss is too staggering. The very mechanisms of our bodies that sustain hope and create meaning cannot function in isolation.1

  We can’t write our stories into the story of wholeness without others writing it with us.

  The tacit message in our churches, culture, and relationships is this: success is public; suffering is private. We see so little of each other’s insides that we come to believe we might be the only ones suffering. We hide our wounds behind bandages of our own making while wondering if the hard things lingering in our lives somehow delineate between who belongs in God’s family and who doesn’t. Hiding and hurting, we become divorced from hope and detached from joy.

  There is a better way to make Christ’s story our own.

  In the first years of my illness, I longed to meet one other person who was young and sick. I dreamed of meeting someone whose life looked like mine, who knew the discomfort of being at the age of peak possibility and potential energy in a body marked instead by fatigue and finitude. Nowhere did the space between me and others seem so wide than in my rheumatologist’s waiting room.

  In the last week were you able to:

  Dress yourself, including tying shoelaces and doing buttons?

  Get in and out of bed?

  Lift a full cup or glass to your mouth?

  Walk outdoors on flat ground?

  Wash and dry your entire body?

  Bend down to pick up clothing off the floor?

  With the clipboard balanced on my knee, I slowly checked off the litany of reasons my life was different from my peers. My ears were perked to hear my name called by the kind nurse with the bushy, fading red hair—the one moment I would feel I was supposed to be there. With each glance around me, I noticed how clearly I didn’t belong. In a room full of bodies adorned with canes, walkers, and gray hair, I felt simultaneously out of place and tethered to a future of sagging skin and twisted fingers. The pale blue walls and cushy chairs were a parody of comfort when the truth was sitting in that room felt like accelerated aging.

  More than what I saw was what I did not see. I didn’t see anyone who looked like me.

  At some point it became easier to believe I was the only young person I knew who was suffering than to hold the pain of my life looking so different from my peers and so contrary to my expectations. Some people get to enjoy their lives, and others get to suffer.

  I swallowed the story that suffering was my own private problem in a waiting room others were blessed to avoid. The lie went down easily, sliding through my neural network of lived experience that taught me uniqueness was the path to protection. I felt safe by judging others as blessed and myself as cursed, an odd way to push people away before they could reject me. I was pitiable, but I was special. I was suffering, and I both envied and judged those who weren’t.2 Like a drug, isolation brought temporary relief, but it could never satiate my longing or stabilize my hope.

  We don’t know how to name the darkness, so we use it to divide. In a culture that loves pleasantries but hates pain, we don’t like acknowledging the way we sometimes feel overcome by doubt, anxiety, and sadness. We swallow the darkness, hiding our hurt inside, but a seed swallowed rather than sown suffocates. The weakness we hide ends up separating us all from the hope we share.

  I grew up barely knowing how to name and share the things most burdening me. As a church youth group regular, I spent many Wednesday evenings partaking in popcorn prayer, where we would awkwardly take turns asking God for help or telling him how great he is. Usually we would share prayer requests before starting. Often, one of us would share an unspoken request, which inevitably meant we wanted prayer for something we felt we couldn’t or shouldn’t share. We hid our hurts behind the word unspoken.

  In those awkward youth group prayers, I missed the truth that difficulties are not something to hide but realities to name and endure. In denying hard things words, I missed learning that suffering is an expected part of being God’s child and that sharing it is where hope will rise. Something unspoken can’t be known. It becomes a private asphyxiation, a seed stuck in the throat of an individual body straining for the oxygen of God’s love.

  By the end of 2012 my life had again receded to the privacy of my home after another massive flare of disease. The inflammation in my spine and throughout my body had so ravaged me that I could barely rise from the couch where I spent most of my waking hours. Just a couple months before that I was thriving, crafting marketing copy, emails, and curriculum about social justice for the Chalmers Center, a Christian nonprofit doing incredible work. Suddenly the luster of dreams had dimmed into questioning whether I wo
uld ever be able to work again.

  I compared myself with my able-bodied peers and coworkers and wondered why they could work when I could barely walk. I felt a strain between my inner potential and outer capacity, as though my body were wringing out all that was good in me into a lifeless heap on the couch. I had spent life differentiating myself from others; from my comments in classrooms to the way I dressed, my life was unknowingly built along the boundary lines of being unique. Now I was unique again for the reason I hated most—being a twenty-four-year-old who was too sick to work. Most days I couldn’t leave the house, even for church, and in isolation I started sinking farther into the lonely story of being uncommonly afflicted.

  There’s a certain sadness to being alone most of the time because your husband is working extra hours to make up a sliver of the income you lost from being too weak. There’s a certain defeat to watching filth accumulate around the tiny home you are confined to, because you are too sick to stand long enough to scrub half-eaten food off a pot. When you can’t even keep your home marginally clean, it’s almost too embarrassing to allow someone inside. Sarah came anyway.

  She’d stop by once or twice a week on her way home from work, often knocking at the door without even calling first. Sometimes I considered hiding in the back room. Yet somehow I would rise from the dungeon of the couch and hobble my way to the door, those dozen steps a gulf to either sudden shame or stunning hope. Somehow, in the squalor and shame of disease, I found the courage to let her in. And somehow she kept coming. I’m still not sure who was more courageous. Sarah would sit by my side on my pleather, overstuffed couch and never mention the smell coming from my dirty kitchen.

  Suffering had confined me to my home and reinforced a wall around my soul of safety in uniqueness—even dark, twisted, unwanted uniqueness. The wall was a facade that crumbled in Sarah’s consistent presence.