by Joanie Butman
MIA is not a winning recipe for success as a blogger. That said, sometimes life happens and everything goes off the rails. My apologies for being out of touch for so long with no explanation. It’s been a long haul since January.
First, my father died in January, which was sad but not unexpected. He was 96 and had lived a long, relatively healthy life – much to his dismay as a lifelong hypochondriac. He spent years trying to find a doctor who would say there was something wrong with him. We always told him we would engrave, “I told you I was sick!” on his tombstone, and we intend to do just that.
In February I entered the hospital for what was supposed to be a ‘simple’ surgery, if there is such a thing. It was anything but simple with a grueling recovery, which took months and is still ongoing in some ways. Along with the physical removal of two tumors and pieces of organs, I believe I lost a few brain cells in the process. Honestly, I’m missing more pieces than my old Mr. Potato Head!
Now that my brain fog is starting to lift, I can share that despite the physical and emotional pain of this winter, God was with me through it all. He has revealed Himself in new ways during each of my prior surgeries, and this one was no exception. I am eternally grateful for the intimate time with him. I’ve always hesitated to attempt to describe my God experiences in the hospital, fearing they would be diminished simply by trying to find words adequate enough to capture the Divine. Time with God is meant to be experienced not explained. It transcends language – at least my command of it. The only person I’ve ever found who has come close is Kate Bowler, author of Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved. Following her battle with stage 4 cancer, she writes:
….Thousands of people were interviewed about their brushes with death in every kind of situation – being in a car accident, giving birth, attempting suicide, et cetera – and many described the same odd thing: love. I’m sure I would have ignored the article if it had not reminded me of something that happened to me, something that I felt uncomfortable telling anyone. It seemed too odd and too simplistic to say what I knew to be true – that when I was sure I was going to die, I didn’t feel angry. I felt loved….I felt as though I’d uncovered something like a secret about faith. Even in lucid moments, I found my feelings so difficult to explain. I kept saying, “I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go back.”
At a time when I should have felt abandoned by God, I was not reduced to ashes, I felt like I was floating, floating on the love and prayers of all those who hummed around me like worker bees, bringing notes and flowers and warm socks and quilts embroidered with words of encouragement. They came in like priests and mirrored back to me the face of Jesus.
When they sat beside me, my hand in their hands, my own suffering began to feel like it had revealed to me the suffering of others, a world of those who, like me, are stumbling in the debris of dreams they thought they were entitled to and plans they didn’t realize they had made.
That feeling stayed with me for months. In fact, I had grown so accustomed to that floating feeling that I started to panic at the prospect of losing it. So I began to ask friends, theologians, historians, pastors I knew and nuns I liked, “What am I going to do when its gone?” And they knew exactly what I meant because they had either felt it themselves or read about it in great works of Christian theology. St. Augustine called it “the sweetness.” Thomas Aquinas called it something mystical like the “the prophetic light.” But all said yes, it will go. The feelings will go. The sense of God’s presence will go. There will be no lasting proof that God exists. There will be no formula for how to get it back. But they offered me this small bit of certainty, and I clung to it. When the feelings recede like the tides, they said, they will leave an imprint. I would somehow be marked by the presence of an unbidden God. It is not proof of anything. And it is nothing to boast about. It was simply a gift.
Kate Bowler
Everything Happens for a Reason
Pages 120-122
And one I will cherish. Like many of God’s gifts, it came wrapped in adversity. He may be offering the gift of His presence continually, but for me it is in the midst of pain that I am most open to receive it.
Until next time…