A Quest for Wellness

Bodies have warranties that end around thirty-five.

Or so it seems to me. This year has been especially difficult for me. Unexplained chronic abdominal pain has haunted me all Summer. Yet, it could’ve been happening much longer, but it wasn’t constant.

I have been in and out of tests including a colonoscopy since the end of July. Nothing has been determined yet.

I do have celiac disease, but my current problems aren’t matched to it.

Early this morning I had a HIDA Scan to monitor gallbladder function. I am hopeful this could give some explanation for my struggles. Chronic pain is exhausting.

I don’t have any big truth lessons to share today, nor spiritual witticisms. It’s hard to be sick and unable to do things you once enjoyed. I never imagined myself as someone who is chronically unhealthy, but here I am.

In the midst of the bodily pain, it helps to keep my mind on things that fill me with joy. Little moments reading with my son, or how my wife glows when she is almost done with a good book. The life inside my body and mind is not in a healthy place, but the life outside is full of beauty and wonder. If I can keep returning to mindfulness of these tiny miracles, like breathing, I can, for a moment, forget my suffering.

Becoming, Not Broken.

What is wrong with me? Why am I the worst? I guess I deserve all the bad things that happen to me. After all, I am a broken shattered creature, doomed by two people in a garden from a time before history . . . I could not hope to change my brokenness. Could I?

As a teenager, I thought the answer to fixing all my shattered pieces was becoming a Christian. Not just a good Lutheran boy going to church and mumbling the liturgy while thinking of Star Wars. No. I would really dedicate myself to being a Christian. I would pray the prayer all the televangelists said to pray. I would weep and pray and fast. Then I would be healed of all my depression and self-hatred.

But.

It didn’t work instantly. And I had to unlearn some things to find quiet waters.

From birth I was taught and believed in a theology that said one could not earn salvation by their own actions or intentions. It was by grace alone, I was told, we are saved and transformed, but then why did it feel like I had to justify my continued place at the Christian table? Grace didn’t feel amazing. It felt high maintenance. And I was broken. Like a pudgy little Humpty Dumpty, I needed to be put together again. I was fragile. And I didn’t have the help of king’s horses or men to put myself back together.

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In recent months I have begun reading the Bible with different eyes, seeking themes of growth and calm and rest. And the they are everywhere. So strongly does the Bible emphasize the sacred idea of resting that . . . I am surprised there aren’t more conservative Christians demanding a National Year of Jubilee every seven years where all debts are forgiven, people are paid a double salary the year before, and no one works. Sounds like a pretty chill idea to me.

Where were these stories and dreams of a restful, peaceful society when I was growing up? Where was this call to calm when I felt the angst of puberty? I didn’t need to be told I was broken. Most of us feel that way at one time or another regardless of theology; and the thing I think we are really wanting is to be told we are beloved. Our painful conditions won’t be healed the moment we start down the path of love.

Broken things get fixed quickly and can be broken again.

Healing. Is. A. Process.

And if healing and maturing is a process . . . that means the imagery of being “broken” is, at best, weak and, at its worst, a harmful description of my condition.

I am becoming. Every mistake. Each embarrassment. These and other shortcomings were not due to my being broken. I was growing and needed to experience things to help me mature. They were lessons. And once I have eyes to see and ears to hear, I can learn from them and put down deeper roots.

It ain’t easy. Like anything worthwhile, it takes practice and mistakes . . . be gentle with yourself. I believe in you.

Goodbye, Ancient One

Three weeks ago, a large branch fell from our neighbor’s giant oak tree and crashed against her garage, taking a healthy branch from another oak with it, and destroyed a corner of her house’s roof. The branch shifted the frame of her garage and exposed the inner workings of the tree. It was hollow through and through. It had to come all the way down.

It was standing tall and twisted like ancient oak do when I left for work this morning. When I came home, only a bare patch of ground and hole in the sky remained.

I want to remember this oak. It was older than the United States and probably a sapling during the War of Independence. It bore silent witness to deforestation, the rise of a city, the loss of wildlife, and the establishment of the neighborhood it would watch over for more than ninety years.

The tree towered over our backyard, well over one hundred feet high with limbs that spread all over in joyous abandon. One branch grew closer and closer to our deck each year, stretching a long twig towards it. I thought of God reaching to Adam in Michelangelo’s famous painting. And like the painting, my finger will never touch that which was reaching for me.

Do trees have ghosts? Do cicada pupae know when the tree whose sap they drank for decades is gone? Am I crazy for thinking such things?

I spent a good many minutes today looking for a stray sapling or just-sprouted acorns. I want to keep the noble genetics of a gentle giant alive.

A mature tree is a massive ancient life form. I won’t see another oak like that one raised from seed on our neighbor’s property. I would be long dead before it grew large and strong enough to once again provide shelter for hundreds of insects, mammals, and birds. Regardless, I have a strong desire to shepherd more trees to maturity. Even if I will never see them fully grown. That isn’t the point.