True Hope
Many years
ago, in the darkest season of years of chronic illness, I made the mistake of
starting a blog to share my experience, very much including the ugly.
Eloquently of course. But all of it.
For the first year I’d been sick, I’d told very few people. But by the second
year I had to get it out. Long, silent nights of no sleep will lead you there.
IG solidarity wasn’t really a thing, and blogging was the place to speak.
I could hardly even clean the house. I rarely made it out anywhere. Sleep was
ridiculous. Pain was almost constant, and weird sensations filled its gaps. My
life and future were just a pile of ruins. And I needed to at least get the
frustration out of my system and onto the keyboard.
It went so well for about half a minute. But, true to human nature, frustration
with the “doom and gloom” of my posts finally hit the readers I did have.
Right on cue, just as I was really settling into this blogging thing, someone
who had initially praised my writing, who wasn’t chronically ill, who was
viewing my verbalized suffering and vulnerability through a glass darkly, and
who knew good and well I was openly a “born again Christian” thought they
should make sure.
They needed to know if I even had the hope that Jesus gives. Simply because of
my honesty about how hard this illness was. And for all I know, probably also
because I didn’t tie up each post with a neat little Sunday school bow.
I was, understandably, shocked by the question, for many reasons. A big one
was the view the question revealed—something I learned to be an unwritten rule:
communicated continuous suffering is not okay. Paul had had his thorn, but he
only mentioned it once, so keep it down. Eloquent though your cries may be,
they ought not be so uttered. (Apparently no one reads Psalms.)
Another big one was that it showed what I was quickly learning to be another
unwritten rule: Christians are not allowed to have deep, ongoing sadness or
anything that appears like depression (I wasn’t even depressed at that time),
or else it calls their whole claim to faith into question. (Again, has anyone
heard of David?)
And yet … do you know any miserable Christians? I sure
do. Actually, I would describe a large percentage of the Christians I’ve ever
encountered that way, because I’ve learned to see past words. I’m talking about
people who are chronically going through the motions, checking their religious
boxes, but have this permanent look of defeat or emptiness or pain….
They’re allowed to go about their lives claiming to be Christian. And they’re
only not questioned because they keep their suffering generally to themselves.
Sure, they’ll request prayer for their next doctor appointment every chance they
get, but they’re not blogging the nitty gritty of their experience in the
interest of raising awareness of invisible illness. That’s seen as wallowing in
despair. Brutal honesty is nowhere on their radar. (And David’s over there
waving his hand going, “hellooo?”) So they of course claim their hope of Jesus
rightly.
But I was too open, too real, and too … uncomfy to read. Where’s the hope?? So
there must be no Jesus in my life, surely.
As time has gone on, that accusational question has stayed with me. I mentally
face palm and then move on til it surfaces again a few months or a year later.
And then even more layers appear of what was wrong with such a question and the
very foundation it stood on. It held many more implications:
That if you share about continuous suffering, you will make others
uncomfortable and must be prepared to answer to religious scrutiny.
That the belief in hope of eternal—though eventual—relief through
Jesus should solely get us through this apparently pointless life.
That someone
vulnerably sharing suffering must not have any hope if they’re not explicitly
stating it. Christians are nothing without their obligatory platitudes. Yet it
never occurs to them that the allegedly absent hope might be all that’s keeping
the sufferer on earth.
That hope—hope for eternal relief—is all that Jesus could give. Not healing.
Not a leading to healing. Not knowledge for healing. Not even capacity for
healing. And definitely not comfort in this life, now! Just distant future
hope. That’s the best He can do….
And that brand of hope overlaps perfectly with the broken, rusted, but
treasured societal modern framework of “sick care.”
Illness maintenance. No
healing. No help. Just try to survive on that hope of eventual freedom from the
accepted suffering of this God-forsaken crap hole—and be happy about it.
And it further preaches the actual heresy that Jesus is the only possible source that could get anyone through anything.
Not God. Not the Holy Spirit. Just another regurgitated phrase placing Jesus at
the top of a hierarchy in a place He never claimed to be.
And finally, that there’s not anything that God created into us or into this
earth that could assuage suffering. He made beauty and love and fresh air and
trees and music and thought processes, but let’s skip all other possible routes
of comfort, much less healing, and go straight to hope of heaven and the undeserved scrubbing of sins as all that we’re
supposed to take any strength in life or suffering from.
And in that vein, that we should certainly not take heart in the strength of a
husband’s love or in the joy of a life calling peeking below the wreckage. That
“the hope that Jesus gives” is the only place to find anything—the rest of the
Trinity, all of creation, and every aspect of our amazing bodily and spiritual
abilities aside.
What their question (a common one aimed at those
with chronic illness) actually communicated was, “Gosh what a downer you’ve
turned into—don’t you have the relief of eternal fire insurance to get you
through this irredeemable life of misery?”
There were so, so many other things that could have been said. They could have
even helped. Instead I was left wondering how to gracefully say, “You’re
actually questioning my salvation because I’m openly sick and sad about it?”
We are indeed offered supernatural hope—for here and now. And it’s so much
bigger than the brand woven into their incredulous question. They didn’t have
any more hope than I did at the time—they just used theirs in accusation under
the guise of care while I held mine deep inside.
I shut down the blog with a very clear post about why.
And within a year and a half I tasted my first ever drop of real hope. The kind
that brings healing in this life.
Four years later, I was a different person, healed, in spite of everyone around
me who believed it impossible because it was never possible or because it was
taking too long. Through God’s intrinsic healing abilities crafted into each of
us, His leading to the right thing at the right time, and my own dogged hard
work and determination.
I had hope all along. It was weak and tired and manufactured. Then it took on a
glow and started to hum. And it slowly grew to a roar.
Hope. Not a wait-for-it, wish away your life and belittle your suffering hope.
But a conviction, a knowing, a certainty that the goodness of God will indeed
come in the land of the living—and soon.
They have no idea still what they really said in that question. And they have
no idea still what they were missing.
But I’ve been roaring about it ever since I saw the truth:
The hope is very real. And it’s much more beautiful than we’ve been told.
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