Sick

“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” Susan Sontag

This afternoon, I have just had my “good passport” stamped once more. I am very glad to re-enter the “kingdom of the well.”

Last week, the kindergartener in our family missed his first day of school for this year. He’d awoken in the middle of the night, exceedingly ill from one mean little stomach virus.

Like any good family, we share whatever we have.

Three days later, I was home with his little brother who woke up from his nap, crying. He was pitiful, and as I picked him up from his bed, I felt his tight stomach and knew why. A few moments later, I placed a desperate call to his mother, detailing our 2-year-old’s transformation into a tiny Mt. Vesuvius. MAYDAY, MAYDAY!

Monday is my day “off,” and as I worked on backyard projects through the afternoon, I started to notice that I wasn’t feeling so good myself. By bedtime, I knew that my turn to fight the bug had come…and the bug was clearly winning.

Now, some of you out there reading this column have been really sick in your lives. Some of you are fighting serious illness even now. Understand, I don’t mean that you’ve been “stomach flu” sick, I mean “cancer” sick.

I have not. The truth is, that to this point in my life, I have been remarkably healthy, and can really only remember a handful of experiences like the one I had this week. To even talk of my 36-hour trial as “suffering” is to belittle the experiences of real suffering that many of you have had.

Even so, I’ve wondered if spending a whole day in bed yesterday, with no desire to get up and do anything, for any reason, can’t give me some small window in to how fragile and dependent we human beings really are?

And here’s one thing I know for sure: I do not suffer well.

Monday I was doing physical labor, king of my little backyard realm. Tuesday I was flat in bed, complete with fever and fatigue, in need of help and care. I didn’t like the experience one little bit.

I don’t like pain. I don’t like missing work. I don’t like daytime TV. I’m so thankful for a wife who stayed patient and put up with my whining, but I don’t like having to be a drag on the family.

I don’t like being dependent.

Too bad.

“Sickness,” just as surely as “health,” is a part of life. We are physical creatures, and these bodies do break down. For a time, the breakdowns are simply temporary inconveniences, and we believe that we can make assumptions about the good health that will always be ours.

But one day, sooner or later, we all must learn tough lessons about pain, suffering and our fundamental dependence upon God and one another.

As a pastor, I receive a deep and rare privilege as people of faith invite me into their most personal and private places of pain and suffering.

In only my second year of ministry, I watched “Ms. Pauline” die from cancer. She was a woman of great faith and incredible determination. Already sick when I met her, I looked on as she grew more and more dependent on her family and other caregivers.

I was 24 years old, and didn’t have a clue as to what to say to a dying woman, but I’ll never forget the things that she told me. “Adam,” she’d say, “I’m going to be alright. God is taking care of me. I have peace.”

In those days before she died, Ms. Pauline taught me more than the best classes in pastoral care ever could. She taught me that sometimes it’s ok not to know what to say because just being there is enough. She taught me that death isn’t the scariest thing a person of faith can ever face, because it isn’t the end.

She taught me that strength and weakness can’t be measured simply by how frail someone appears on the outside. She taught me that a good life and a good death have one big thing in common --- they both hang entirely on our ability to acknowledge and embrace our dependence, without shame.

Today, I’ve shaken off the illness that clung to me yesterday, and I’m going to be fine. My biggest problems are a little fatigue and a piled-high inbox of e-mail. In a few weeks, I won’t even remember being sick.

Although I know I probably I won’t, I hope I’ll remember the lessons. I hope that each of us, each day, can learn a little more of the key to living that Paul gives us in Romans:

“…let us also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

However you’re feeling today, and whatever you face, you can rest assured that Ms. Pauline was right:

We’re going to be alright. God is taking care of us.

Grace and Peace,
Adam

LIFE AT SOTH:

Don’t forget that our Church family picnic will be at Clinton Farms this Saturday, from 10a.m. – 3 p.m. Bring a side-dish for a picnic lunch and enjoy a fun day together with the SOTH family.

Good to Great study concludes tonight with a look at our final two chapters, “The Flywheel and the Doom Loop,” and “Built to Last.” 6:30 pm at “The Ranch.”

The Da Vinci Code sermon series continues this Sunday at 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. with Part Two: “Who Was Mary Magdalene?”

Baby Noor Update -- Adam, Debbie Stone and Jonl Steinke got to go out and see Baby Noor with her host family this past Friday. She weighed only about 8 pounds upon her arrival (at 3.5 months old). She is now 7.5 months, and weighs over 20 pounds. She was happy and very responsive, laughing and playing during the whole visit. She has undergone surgeries to repair her spina bifida, to improve flexibility in her feet, and received shunts to ensure drainage of fluid away from her brain. She does remain paralyzed below the waist and is not expected to recover movement in her legs. At this time, her return to Iraq is dependent upon how she continues to respond to treatment, and the date has not yet been set. Please continue to keep Baby Noor, her family, and her host family in your prayers.