Last night, I had the privilege of going to a church in the Garner area, Mount Zion United Methodist Church, to share my story. The invitation to do so came from a new and now very special friend whom I met at the Olde English Tea Room in June of this year when I shared my story there. This friend supported her husband through cancer several years ago, and then she decided to start a support group in her area for cancer patients and their caregivers; and she is very passionate about helping both.
When I speak to groups, I don’t normally have my husband and little girl with me. I did last night, and their presence was most meaningful. It was also very hard. Remembering what I call my “sick season” can, of course, be difficult for me; and remembering what those who love me have gone through for me can be even more difficult. We had a couple of very near and dear family friends there as well, a former Meredith student of mine and her husband; I talk about her in my memoir as she’s the one who spent the summer with my little girl and me right after my transplant. She’s expecting her first child any day now. I’ve always felt quite maternal toward her; and I know that my sick season was hard for her.
Loving others, come whatever may, is the easiest and the hardest thing that we’ll ever do down here. But, since we were made from Love and for Love, meaning God, we’re always incomplete unless we are embodying the love we were made from and for. Yet, since the unraveling of this initially perfect realm, love has become hard because everyone and everything has become imperfect–except for the love of God. I felt that love so very strongly in the room last night; and it’s not because I was in a church. It’s because the people I was surrounded by were being the Church–they were embodying the love they were made from and for.
And it was holy–all of it, every person, every word, every story that I heard from those present. There was so much pain in the room, yet I know that the presence of our great God outweighs every pang of it. Amidst the pain last night, there was the eternal joy of Christmas too. And there was a banquet table full of an abundance of homemade holiday food. And there was feasting and “fellowshipping” and occasional laughing. I’ve discovered that this life down here is what I call a package deal–we don’t get to live it fully unless we taste it all; avoiding and/or running from what we call the hard stuff just seems to lead to even more hard stuff.
And I’ve discovered too that there really is a pay-off to allowing oneself to suffer with others, to allowing oneself to become a real part of their pain. Again, it is holy, and as such it brings a new level of wholeness to one’s soul/being. It is Christ come to life in our very own flesh. We need only glance through the Gospels to see that this is true. Jesus’ life was all about others and their dilemmas. And he did much more than just step into their unspeakably painful circumstances–he went to death and back to order to erase them all forever. So, the very least we, his people, can do is share others’ pain for a while–just a while as we await his “comeback.”
Leave a Reply