Undone

by Michele Cushatt

  By the time I landed in Bloomington, Illinois, and checked into my hotel that Thursday, I had nothing to give.

  Chronic pain is a drain. I’d hit a local Walgreens to buy hydrogen peroxide for mouth rinses. (If you’ve never done a peroxide rinse, don’t.) I gargled warm salt water and popped three Advil every four to six hours, without fail. I hoped I could talk by the time I reached the venue.

  In addition to my physical limitations, I had little emotional reserves. The previous months’ rollercoaster of emotions and experiences had zapped my strength. And my family, my rock of Gibraltar, was a thousand miles away. Intellectually, I recognized this speaking opportunity as a privilege. Someone believed in me and my message, or I wouldn’t be there.

  Snap out of it, Michele!

  How does one snap out of a deep, swallowing hole? Alone in my hotel room, I could think only of how much I wanted to go home. I missed the safety of the familiar. I feared the unknown that awaited me the next day and doubted I had it in me to fulfill my job. Even as I wrestled with pain and homesickness, I chastised my selfishness.

  The next day, thousands of women would gather, hungry and hopeful, waiting for some kind of offering from empty me.

  God, I have nothing. Nothing. You’re going to have to show up in a big way. The Advil too. I don’t know how I’m going to do this.

  Every now and then, a particular Bible passage haunts me. In the months preceding the cancer diagnosis, Romans 12:1 – 2 had been one of those passages. It showed up when I listened to the radio. Made an appearance in the devotional I read. Flashed on the screen during the pastor’s Sunday sermon. Appeared tucked in an email delivered to my inbox. For months, Romans 12:1 – 2 became like a neighbor who wouldn’t go away — knocking, knocking, knocking on my front door until I finally opened it up.

  “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

  Isn’t that nice.

  I had no idea what it meant. Or what God wanted me to do with it. But it wouldn’t leave me alone.

  Romans 12. Romans 12. Romans 12.

  When cancer showed up, I assumed the reference had something to do with my new circumstance, as if God wanted to use it to prepare me for this new thing. “Renewing my mind” made a modicum of sense. I needed to get control of my fear, change how I allowed myself to think and process my circumstances.

  Okay, got it. Check.

  Other than that, I hadn’t a clue. Offering my body as a living sacrifice? A spiritual act of worship?

  Pretend this is Pictionary, God. I need more clues.

  I didn’t expect the means of his revealing.

  Somehow, I pulled myself together in my hotel room and started the long walk to the conference center. I needed to set up my book table and meet the event hosts.

  Erika greeted me. A spunky, dark-haired woman with a smile two miles wide. She extended her hand and introduced herself.

  “Hi, Michele. I’m Erika. Nice to meet you!”

  Fun and sassy. I could peg it with those first exchanged words. I liked her right away.

  With Erika leading the way, I hauled my computer bag and purse across the product floor and to my book table. It sat in the center of a gigantic ballroom, a room that would be filled with booths, speakers, and thousands of chatty moms soon enough. In between speaking sessions, I’d sit at my table, along with a dozen other speakers. My home base for the weekend.

  It took me most of an hour to arrange the table with books, business cards, and freebies. Then, pain. The Advil was wearing off, again. Pulling three more out of my purse, I abandoned the book table in search of a water fountain.

  That’s when I heard Erika’s voice behind me.

  “Michele, hold on,” she hissed, a whisper with the volume of urgency. Then she grabbed my behind. Yes, Erika’s hand on my derriere.

  “Excuse me?” I jumped, might’ve slapped her hand. We didn’t know each other that well.

  “Hold on a minute.” She maintained her grip on my backside. “You lost your skirt.”

  What?!

  “Your skirt fell. I’m pulling it back up.”

  Sure enough. The long, chocolate brown skirt I’d meticulously ironed and donned an hour or two before had fallen well below the tree line. In a wide open ballroom filled with no less than thirty conference staff and speakers preparing for their event, I’d revealed the lesser half of my body.

  Isn’t that nice.

  How embarrassing. I wanted to impress these people, appear every bit the polished and professional speaker they’d hired me to be. Ahem. I might’ve missed that mark.

  Offer your body as a living sacrifice.

  Romans 12:1 – 2. Again. You’ve got to be kidding me.

  Okay. Fine. I get it. But cut me a little slack here. My skirt?

  I imagine he laughed, deep and rumbly. Full of mirth and absent mockery. I believe he laughs more than we think.

  A living sacrifice. Holy and pleasing, Michele.

  But I’m a mess. Empty, in pain. Nothing to give. I feel more afraid than faithful.

  Exactly. I’m with you.

  What had started with my mortification ended up becoming my salvation. Dignity was officially off the table. Polish and perfection didn’t bother to show up. But grace was very much on the table. All I could offer was me, as empty and lost as I was. And it turned out to be exactly what those beautiful, precious moms needed. Me too.

  In the end, my weekend with the women of Hearts at Home became my first big step toward my postcancer ministry life, giving me a hint of the redemption that can come when you dare to dive into the dark places with those who suffer there. For two days, women who heard my story lined up at my book table, one by one sharing their own stories of heartache: of broken marriages, wayward children, and the difficult wrestlings of this life of faith. Again and again, I abandoned a chair to grasp hands with a stranger, close my eyes, and pray. Together we poured out our hearts to a God we desperately needed but didn’t always understand. Real, broken, in-progress women trying so very hard to live. In those moments, far from the safety of my home and family, the veil between heaven and earth thinned. A rare gift, and one I would’ve missed had I canceled my flight and stayed at home.

  Erika and I laughed about the skirt malfunction all weekend, as did the traumatized eyewitnesses, no doubt. My presentations weren’t flawless. Exhaustion and pain still hovered. But I discovered something as I talked and prayed with the equally broken, weary, and in-pain women whose paths crossed mine: authenticity ministers far more than put-togetherness. And vulnerability builds a far stronger bond than perfection.

  There is strength in empty. Not the kind of strength we wish for. We want polished strength, the kind that wears a cape and leaps tall buildings with a single bound. I couldn’t leap or fly or save anyone from catastrophe. In fact, I could barely show up. But I did. Show up. And that ended up being a strength all of its own.

  Ministry — of the truest kind — isn’t about impressing unknown strangers with spotless presentations and a flawless life. It’s about exposing the hidden imperfections and giving others permission to do the same. Becoming a fellow struggler who delivers zero judgment but abundant grace.

  Few things display unadulterated beauty like a pouring out when you’ve nothing to give. It must come from an otherworldly place, a well whose source you do not control. In that weak and lonely place of utter dependency, I learned a little bit about what it means to be a living sacrifice. It is a pure, holy, and sacred offering. Simply because you have nothing to do with it.

  A spiritual act of worship.

  Even when — especially when — your skirt falls to the floor.

  CHAPTER 9

  Hammer
Blows and Houses That Stand

  Character is not born of stillness. It requires the hammer blows of affliction.

  — CHARLES R. SWINDOL

  MY DAD SAID I MUST’VE BEEN FIVE OR SIX YEARS OLD AT THE TIME. Stubborn as a rusted bolt, even then. His words, not mine.

  Hammer in one hand, my little-girl fingers gripped a thick silver nail in the other. Dad, a natural carpenter, stood to the side, working on a table or bookshelf or some other wood project of his own. He could build just about anything with a block of wood. To this day, I love the smell of wood shavings and the burnt smell of a working saw. It still makes me think of him.

  I knelt in the grass in front of one of his scraps, face set. I wanted to be strong like Daddy, a maker of something beautiful.

  Brow furrowed, I placed the nail square on the board. My right hand gripped the heavy old hammer and pulled back for a mighty six-year-old swing.

  Whoosh!

  I missed the nail by an inch. Maybe more, considering the dent in the board. Determined, I gave it another go. This time I came close enough to whack my finger. Tears threatened, but I swallowed them down. I couldn’t cry, not with Daddy close by.

  Instead, I pulled myself back up, grabbed the hammer, and tried again.

  And again.

  And again.

  I lost track of how many swings and misses. Each time my determination grew more fierce. Until the last time. I really thought I was going to do it that time. Which is why, when the hammer missed and the nail toppled, I exploded in frustration.

  “I can’t do it!” I wailed, throwing both the nail and the hammer onto the ground. “It’s too hard!”

  Daddy didn’t stop, even though I knew he heard my rant. He kept working, not saying a word. For half a minute, he simply let me pout. Then he put his own hammer down, turned, and looked at me with an intensity I’ll never forget.

  “Stop saying ‘can’t.’ ” He crossed his arms, unyielding. “You’re not a quitter, Michele. Get back up and try again. Now.”

  I was so mad at him for that. I needed comfort, not confrontation. Truth is I wanted him to feel sorry for me, to understand my pain and give me reason to walk away. Instead, he called me on my lack of courage. Demanded that I keep swinging.

  There was no arguing with Daddy. Not then, not now. Seething, defeated, I picked up the hammer one more time. It wouldn’t matter. One more swing wouldn’t bring me success.

  Whoosh!

  Wouldn’t you know it. That was the swing that drove the nail into the board.

  I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve quit anything. I’m stubborn and strong-willed to a fault, like a bulldog with his teeth sunk into a prize. But in the spring after cancer, I had little chops left for much of anything.

  Within a week of returning from the Hearts at Home Conference, I knew something was wrong. Underneath my tongue, where January’s biopsies had been cut out, a small quarter-inch purplish bubble had formed. It looked like a balloon filled with water, growing in the soft, tender tissue hidden in the floor of my mouth. About the size of my pinkie fingernail. Each day, it grew bigger, looking more and more taut, as if it might burst. Only it didn’t. Instead, pain radiated down my throat and neck.

  No. Please, no.

  It didn’t take my nursing degree to know this wasn’t supposed to happen. Weary of calling my doctor with complaints (and half afraid of her answer), I shot off an email message. Less intrusive, I thought. She replied quickly, asking me to take a picture and send it.

  Now trust me when I say shooting a picture of the inside of your mouth is neither easy nor attractive. I had to open wide like a yawning hippopotamus, finagle my smart phone inside, and — hold it — snap! Definitely social media material. Or not.

  After evaluating the pic, she told me to watch it for another week or two, let her know if the bubble changed size.

  It didn’t take more than a few days to see it had grown considerably. Without any other recourse, I called her office and set another appointment, dreading it in my bones. I didn’t want yet another knife-wielding procedure, didn’t want more pain followed by baby-food dinners.

  But that’s exactly what happened.

  In April.

  And July.

  And again in August.

  I had three more surgeries that year. Each time, the balloonlike cyst grew bigger than before. Each time, I resisted and ranted against it. Then, spent, I called the doctor, endured another outpatient procedure, and returned home to soft food, pain pills, and weeks of slow healing.

  Those long, unending months drained me in every way. My clothes hung off my body like a child in her mama’s dress. At my lowest, I weighed 124 pounds, far less than usual for my fivefoot-seven-inch athletic frame. My face hollowed, dark circles rounding my eyes, as much from exhaustion as from the chronic fear that wouldn’t let me go.

  I hated it, both the fear of another blow and the aloneness it created. Some days it hit me head-on, like a hurricane wind, laying me flat and keeping me from moving forward. On the good days, it hovered like background noise I couldn’t quite ignore, leaving me agitated and on edge. Unpredictability dictated my day-to-day life. Each twinge of pain came with a question mark: had the cancer come back? Like the girl swinging her hammer and always missing the nail, I didn’t want to do it anymore.

  Why, God? I keep praying and pleading. I keep asking you for relief. Why won’t you do something?

  I never received an answer from him. No divine memo explaining why he didn’t swoop in and save the day. With a word or a single thought, he could’ve commanded the pain to stop, my body to heal. He holds the oceans in his hands, sets the earth to spinning, and weaves cells together into human form. Why wouldn’t he conquer this cyst for me? Was it too much to ask?

  To this day, I don’t understand why God didn’t wave his magic wand and give me relief. However, in the absence of a holy revelation, I finally came closer to a medical one.

  The cyst had likely formed as a result of January’s biopsies. I’d gone to Dr. Forrester’s office that day consumed with fear and worry over a couple of suspicious spots. I suspect she performed the biopsies as much to assuage my fear as for any medical necessity.

  In the process, those incisions interrupted the path of the salivary glands under my tongue. As a result, they weren’t draining as they should, instead forming a pool. A large cyst in the floor of my mouth. All because of two biopsies.

  The only fix? Perform a marsupialization, a fileting open of the cyst tissue to allow the area to heal correctly from the inside out.

  “The body knows what to do,” Dr. Forrester had said. “We just have to give it a chance to heal itself. As many times as necessary.”

  As many times as necessary proved to be many more than once.

  For the first time, I understood the emotion behind Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 12: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me,” he said. Like me, Paul asked the God he trusted for relief. Again and again. From what? We don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter. But it was difficult enough for him to label it “a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.”14

  Tormented. Yes, that’s it exactly. I felt tormented by the unrelenting pain and fear. I wanted to close the cancer chapter, leave it behind and run full force back into life and health. But each time healing neared, something cut me wide open again. Every time I found new strength to keep moving forward, another unexpected circumstance crushed me.

  Whoosh!

  What’s wrong with me?

  Whoosh!

  Why won’t you fix this?

  Whoosh!

  It’s too hard. I’m done.

  Unlike the horrific pain and grief of so many in this broken world, my crisis wasn’t life threatening or terminal. All along, I understood this. It wasn’t a fatal car accident, the death of a child, or a famine in India.

  Still, given enough time, even a termite can take a house down.

 
; Months of pain and uncertainty wore away my faith. Like a constant dripping, circumstances eroded my resolve. Just as my clothes hung off my frame, I shrank to a fraction of my former self. No longer strong. No longer determined. Instead, I wallowed in the enormity of my circumstance and my inability to control the outcome. I didn’t have the strength or will to pull back the hammer and keep swinging.

  April 6, a few short weeks after an abscess, a root canal, and a Hearts at Home Conference, I once again found myself on a cold operating table in Dr. Forrester’s procedure room. She called in two nurses to assist. I was to be numbed, but not sedated. It will take only a half hour, she said. Just relax, rest. Then you’ll be on your way home.

  Rest? If only.

  I curled up on my right side, right arm underneath my head, mouth open, so Dr. Forrester could do her work. I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t cry. Instead tears, silent and plentiful, fell in rivers down my cheeks and my tucked arm to drench the table that was holding me up.

  “Are you okay?” One of the nurses looked at me, confused by the tears. The surgeon hadn’t done anything yet. “Is she okay?” He turned to Dr. Forrester when I didn’t respond.

  Didn’t he know I couldn’t talk?

  God, please. No more.

  In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells a story about two carpenters. One foolish and the other wise. The first, dreaming of an ocean view, built his house on a beach. Sand and water as far as the eye could see.

  The other builder, more practical than pampered, opted for a higher foundation, building his house on stone rather than sand. The rocks didn’t come with an ocean view. A true carpenter, he knew what mattered was not so much the view out the window as what lay underneath the floor.

  Both houses went up without a hitch, both men swinging hammers like experts. Soon, each man moved in and made a home. All was well, both on the sand and on the stone.

  Until unexpected weather hit.

  In a flash, the beach house fell. The builder’s best efforts washed away.

  As for the house built on stone? It endured the same weather, the same relentless beating. Even so, it did not fall. All because of the solid rock underneath.