Do You Want to Get Well?

"Do you want to get well?"  Jesus asked the invalid beside the pool.  And then He healed him of his thirty-eight year infirmity.

In The Rest of God, Mark Buchanan asks his readers the same question regarding spiritual sicknesses.  "Do you want to get well?"

As we discussed this question in Sunday School today, the issue of holding onto memories and mementos of a deceased loved one arose, bringing with it the questions of what healthy grief looks like and how long it ought to last.  It was neither an easy nor a comfortable conversation for more than one of us.  As is often the case, I found myself unable to put much of what I thought into words as I struggled with the question of how to let go of grief... and then, whether we even ought to let go of it.

One clear thought, which I dared not attempt to share aloud as my tears fell silently, was that the death of someone you love changes you.  You can't go back to who you were before tragedy turned your world upside down.  In the days after my sister's death, the chorus of Hillsong's "I Will Never Be the Same Again" ran through my mind almost constantly.  I had a sense, even in those early days, that my life and my views of God would never be quite the same.  I would find a new path to follow.  I would shout, cry, and tremble before a God whose ways I could not comprehend.  In the end, I would stand.  But I would not stand as I stood before.  I would be - and I was - changed.  I won't lie.  Some of the changes were very good, but some of them, eh, not so much.  But that's not the point of this post...

The point is that grief scars, and maybe that's not all bad.  Maybe we're supposed to bear our scars with grace, rather than apply creams and lotions or have them surgically or miraculously removed - or pretend they aren't there.  God promises to wipe away our tears, but I'm not so sure about our scars.  Maybe it is His will that at least a few of those remain.  After all, Christ's wounds, his nail-pierced hands and spear-torn sides, remained even after His resurrection.  Ask Thomas.

And then there's Paul, who pleaded with the Lord three times to remove that pesky thorn.  God's answer, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  (II Corinthians 12:9) Your weakness plus my grace equals my power perfected.  No healing of wounds, let alone of scars, but a command to walk through suffering in the grace and power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Earlier in II Corinthians, Paul writes:

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. 6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

II Corinthians 1:3-7

And this clinches it for me.  While there is a completely unfixed point at which grief becomes excessive and unhealthy, it is not for us to forget our sorrows completely...  or to view scars as a clear sign of weakness or spiritual sickness.  Scars remain, years beyond our initial grief, that we might comfort those who hurt today.  When we hide our scars, we hide our humanity and diminish our ability to relate to and comfort others.  In our scarred brokenness, we hold each other close, comforted by the knowledge that someone knows our pain.  Not just knows about our pain, but truly knows the turmoil of a broken heart. In those moments, we may offer one another the hope not of mere survival, but of triumphant survival by the grace of the Man of Sorrows, Christ himself.

Again, there's a difference between wallowing in sorrows and being forever changed by sorrow.  The first could hardly be considered healthy (though there may be periods in the mourning process in which a brief or occasional wallow is good for the soul).  The latter, however, may be perfectly in line with God's will for His children...  to be touched deeply and eternally by the sorrows of our fallen world.  After all, Christ was broken to heal us of our sins.  He rose again, wounds still visible, and was glorified.  He did not shun the cross, neither to avoid it nor to forget it. Can we expect to be vessels of His healing power without being broken ourselves as He was?  Will we shun sorrow, or will we acknowledge our fellowship with the Savior who leads us through our darkest griefs?

For me, I don't want to wallow in sorrow, nor do I want to define myself by what I have lost.  In fact, I don't want to define myself by what I have gained through sorrow, either.  Rather, I want to walk in honest acknowledgement of my past tragedies and of my present struggles, in joyful thanksgiving for all the blessings God has heaped upon me, and in quiet confidence in the One who holds me in His healing hands, the One who puts the pieces of a broken heart back together -but not quite the way they were in the beginning, that the renewed heart may both cry and laugh with newly broken hearts.  

To answer the question, "Do you want to get well?" when it comes to grief, I guess I'd have to say, "Yes, but well is not what I was before.  It is something different, something sacred... something that feels more keenly than it did before and pours itself out in sorrow for others over and over again.  It is something that, having felt the pain of loss and the joy of survival, understands with bitter pain and glorious joy what it is to "rejoice with those who rejoice, and mourn with those who mourn."  It is a little closer kinship than before with Christ and all mankind.