Don’t lose hope as outwardly we are wasting away…
Hospital gown = trigger
I hate everything about this gown. I hate the sanitized smell. I hate the stiff fabric. I hate fumbling to tie the strings to stay covered. I hate that my feet are exposed, allowing the coldness to permeate throughout my body.
At least I remembered to shave my legs. My friend makes fun of me for this. A few years ago I was in a car accident, and my leg jammed under the dashboard when I hit head-on to the guardrail that saved me from flipping to my possible death. I went home first to shave my legs before limping into the ER.
Hey, I’m trying to keep some sort of dignity while wearing this trigger of sickness, blood, and death.
Hold your two lifeless sons...and you’ll despise this gown.
Lay for a week in it while medicine fights off a toxic fungus from killing you…
Have a panic attack in it while waiting for X-rays after smashing into a semi-truck that spun you around while you scream out for God to save you…
Wring it in your hands while you choke out, “I trust You” over and over while your secondborn twin is breathless across the room...
Be covered in a gown, masks, and gloves as you numbly stare at your one-week-old firstborn twin in the PICU, wondering if you’ll ever wake up from this ongoing nightmare…
And now I look down to see my hand gripping the gown, taking deep breaths to stop myself from ripping it off my body to be burned forever.
The doctor finally comes in, and I robotically list my symptoms over the last year, sharing about my visits with the other specialists I’ve seen, the brain and spine MRIs, the X-ray, the colonoscopy, and the blood tests.
Maybe nothing is wrong with me, and my body is going crazy from all the stress of the last few years. Or something is wrong with me, and I am waiting to hear what I already know to be true...
A fitness guru shared her story of becoming sick and finding health again. She stated that our bodies were made to be well and not sick. I laughed cynically. Oh no, that truth ended back in Genesis 3. I’m sorry, fitness guru, our bodies are on a trajectory of dying. We have been on a slow decline of health since birth, and some faster than others. Our culture is fighting everything against it and is afraid to admit it. I want to shout at the fakeness, the surgeries, the covering up, the filters...that it’s pointless to try to stop it. Even American Christians, who say they believe in eternal life, still act like this is all there is.
My body already attacks itself in the form of an autoimmune disease. I’m now seeking out if there is possibly another disease ravaging some other system. How do you live in this earthly tent where cells that are supposed to protect you are fighting the wrong enemy? I can manage as best as possible to gain remission. But at the root, my own body thinks it’s a threat. (And can I be honest? I’m still not 100% convinced that these wretched cells didn’t kill my boys.)
You may have your own horror stories wearing this gown. And some may be even more horrific than mine. Or maybe it’s someone close to you when you held their hand, cried, and prayed over while this gown hung loosely across them. In the last month, I had four friends lose their parents. All to cancer, and those cells literally eat you from the inside out.
One of those friends came home from her father’s memorial service only days prior to us meeting for small group. The subject for the week? Grief. I stay silent in the conversation because who wants to hear in this very moment, “Well, since I wrote a book on grief...” Yet, my husband won’t let me stay quiet and puts me on the spot to be an encouragement.
I look across the coffee table at my friend, praying that I’ll be sensitive since I’m farther on the other side of grief. I reflect on our pastor’s recent sermons on Creation from Genesis 1-2, and that it was never supposed to be this way. My hospital gowns soaked with blood after birthing my deceased sons was not God’s plan. This nurse friend caring for her father until his last breath was not His will.
God never intended for His creation to die. It makes Him angry. The Greek translation tells us that Jesus was groaning with anger and indignation after Lazarus died (John 11:33). Let that sink in. Angry. Why?
Because Jesus, the “I AM the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), was at the beginning of Creation. He spoke, He breathed life, He made everything in perfect, detailed order. Then He comes to this earth and stands among weeping, disorder, and confusion (“Why weren’t you here earlier?”), as one of his closest friends was wrapped up in burial clothes. He stands in front of a tomb representing the complete reversal of everything He is and everything He made that was “very good.”
To our finite minds, Jesus did a miracle bringing Lazarus back from death. Almost like a magic trick that Harry Potter would have learned at Hogwarts, and “poof” there’s a dead man come back to life. No, He created biology, so he overrode the cells. He manipulated each atom. He reversed them from this trajectory that not one human can avoid.
How do we live in the middle of what was at Creation and what is to come when Jesus reverses all dying? How do we live in the reality that it was never supposed to be this way, and even the ground below our feet groans to be made whole again?
If there is any ground that is groaning, it is the wet ground that my boots sink into as I stand in a cemetery in the middle of a valley in Pennsylvania. My own heart groans and mourns as I watch my friends, who are sisters to me, say goodbye to their dad before his body is buried in this literal dark valley of death.
I let the tears flow freely, feeling the tension between what I see before me and the unseen that is to come. How do we not give up in this life? First, we must answer the question that Jesus asked Lazarus’ sister, “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25)
If we believe, then we have the hope that what is seen in the hospital, the hospice, and the funeral home is not all there is. The hope that outwardly we are wasting away, but oh friends, inwardly we are being renewed every day. The hope that an eternal glory is to come if we walk by faith and not by sight.
How else do you explain my other friend’s mom who was full of peace and joy up to her final earthly days? Because she knew what Jesus knew when He demanded that Lazarus come out of that grave. Death never gets the last word to Him. She believed that in a few short moments she would be face to face with this Jesus who would demand those cancer cells to counteract from the inside out in making her whole. She then traded her hospice clothes for His robe of righteousness.
So I throw the hospital gown on the table and walk out of the exam room. That trigger for me won’t get the last word. Even if my test results come back to reveal that my 36 year-old body is deteriorating sooner and faster than my peers, I will fight for my eyes to stay focused on the unseen of being renewed by the Spirit today, tomorrow, and then the next day until Jesus clothes me with his robe once and for all.
*****
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in Heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling…For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
“Now the One who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come…For we live by faith, not by sight.”
(2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 5:1-2, 4-5,7, NIV)
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