The Encyclopedia of Pain

When I was a little girl, my grandparents had a set of Encyclopedias… you know, books with articles in alphabetical order summarizing all human knowledge… OK, it’s like the internet, but in paper form.  No, I’m not lying.

The pages that I liked the most were of the inside of the human body.  There were 5 or 6 clear acetone pages (like overhead projector sheets… oh, never mind.) that showed the layers of what is inside us.  One page showed all the bones.  The next page showed all the blood vessels; the next all the muscles then organs then skin.  You get the idea.  You could peel back each page to reveal a deeper layer of the body or look at them all together to see the whole body.  I was fascinated by that.

OK, put that story on pause.  I’ll get back to the encyclopedia in a minute.  

Right now in my life, I’m reading a book that you’ve probably heard me talk about called “One Thousand Gifts”  by Ann Voskemp.  I’m reading it slowly to digest each concept and, seriously, it’s changing my life!  The main theme of the book is giving thanks to God.

She writes:

“Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks.  Remembering frames up gratitude.  Gratitude lays out the planks of trust… This is the crux of Christianity: to remember and give things, eucharisteo… remembering with thanks is what causes us to trust- to really believe…

I was totally grooving with her on all these points.  Then with her next thought, I stopped dead in my tracks.

But what do you do when…

“When your memories have an old man groping of your crotch, hot, foul breath on your face, and your skin crawls?  Give thanks?

“And an ultrasound screen stretches still and you’re sent home to wait for the uterine muscles to contract out the dead dreams?

“Or the woman you lay down with, shared the naked and unashamed, she beds another man, hands you back the wedding albums, and says she never knew love for you, what then?

“Remember and give thanks?  For what?  What if remembering doesn’t kindle gratitude?  What if remembering just leaves third-degree burns?

“The words sear… I wait… Spirit comes and He whispers a name.

“Christ.”

When your memories are only painful, how do you look back and find gratitude?

This is the time to superimpose Christ over your pain.  Like the acetone overlays of the body in parts, when we only see our own pain, we only see part of the whole.  But when we overlay the Cross of Christ over our partial perspective, we see the whole.  We look at our pain THROUGH Christ and then, only then, do we see meaning… not in our suffering, but in his.

He was there in your pain.  As he hung on that cross, he felt the pain of all the sin done to you, of all the pain ever caused.  He was there holding you in your pain, with hands wounded.  He pressed your weeping head against his spear-pierced heart and held you in his arms.  With a back split open with lashes, bleeding and raw, he bent over you and picked you up.  You were not alone.  You were not a singular layer.  You were meant to be covered over with the suffering of Jesus.  Only then can you see the whole picture.  Your own suffering is meaningless without the suffering of Jesus.

Just looking at the body parts in sections can look gory and gross… all raw muscles walking around or all blood vessels uncontained and exposed… horrific.  But place the skin over the layers and suddenly you see the whole.  You see beauty.  You see intelligent design and plan.  You see what is recognizable.

Overlay Jesus on your pain and suddenly you see the whole.  You see beauty instead of gross.  You see plan instead of chaos.  You see a familiar face on a strange and surreal memory.

Only then can you remember and let those memories lead you to thanksgiving instead of anger, shame, and hatred.  When you overlay Christ on top of your pain you transform a savage death into the source of life.  Your worst memory becomes your greatest victory.  Your pain seen through the cross will lead you to thankfulness for the cross of Christ.

When you look at Jesus, you defeat the one who tried to defeat you.  You humiliate the one who humiliated you.  Instead of handing your enemy a triumph, you rub his face in his ultimate defeat.  And Jesus turns your mourning into dancing.  He takes your ashes and turns them into something beautiful.  He takes your pain and shows you how it can help others, how it has a greater purpose.

We only understand our suffering by looking at the whole, looking at our past through the filter of the Cross.

She Left Her Mark on Me

Today (April 16th- this is posting later) is the anniversary of the death of a dear friend of mine.  She was one of the first victims of Swine Flu in Mexico back in 2009.

Nely and her family.

That was a really rough year for me.  We had just come home from our first term in Mexico with a sick baby and I myself was going through cancer treatment.  At the same time, we were traveling around raising our funds for our next 4 year term overseas.  One day between my surgery and my radiation treatment, I was at home with Lucy when I received a call from my husband who was out of town.  He said he had received a call from Mexico from our friends telling us that Nely had died unexpectedly that morning.  I felt like someone punched me in the stomach.

I remember falling back against the wall and trembling all over.  How?  What happened?  All the details were sketchy.  We called several friends to try to piece together the details.  We called the airlines and booked tickets for that afternoon.

Our two oldest children were in school and would not be able to accompany us on the trip since their passports had just expired.  That was terribly hard to leave them behind, but we made the arrangements for them to stay with family and called the school to break the news to them over the phone since we would be leaving for the airport within the hour.  It was so hard not to be with them when they cried.

The service in front of her parents' house.

There is no embalming in Mexico.  Bodies are buried within 24 hours of death.  Often times, memorial services are held in the home with the rented casket and the body right there in the home.  Nely was a well loved pastor’s wife.  People came from all over the city to attend one of the 4 or 5 services that were held in her parents’ house.

The thing that I remember the most is looking into the faces of her three children and wondering Why.  Her youngest son Abel, stands out in my memory.  His face brightened to a wide smile when he saw us then immediately crumbled into tears.  I scooped him up in my arms and just hugged him without saying anything.  What could I say?  I had too many questions unanswered in my heart.

Friends comforting Nely's husband

Nely was the kind of friend that every missionary needs.  I feel like God gave her an instinct to understand foreigners.  She left school when she was pre-adolescent and was married by age 15.  Nothing in her education could have prepared her to understand me.  She had never lived outside of Mexico City, even visiting relatives in the country side stressed her out.  She had never even visited many of the famous tourist sites in Mexico City!  So what could have prepared her to understand someone coming from another culture and country, speaking a strange language?  Only God could have given her the understanding and compassion to befriend a foreigner.  Only God could have given me a friend like Nely.

I lack the words in English OR in Spanish to describe the indelible mark that Nely left on my heart… on my life.  And I’m not the only one.  Everyone who knew her loved her and misses her tremendously.  A mom, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend.  She was so very ordinary by the world’s standards, but so very EXTRAORDINARY in all the ordinary things she did day in and day out.  She left her mark and in some small way the world is a better place for having known Nely.  And Heaven is all the more extraordinary because someday I’ll see her again up there.