One should rethink asking me to pray for a person’s needs.
I can’t count how many times I’ve witnessed something similar: the uber healthy fitness buff contracts heart disease. The most devoted mom loses a child. The faithful wife is left behind for another woman. The committed pastor is cannibalized by his elder board. The first-rate athlete loses mobility.
The main thing is attacked, and no amount of devotion could stop it.
It is a watershed moment when we start bargaining with God: Anything but this, Lord. I did everything right! I invested wholeheartedly. I sacrificed greatly. I nurtured this specifically. I need this particularly. I love this especially. How could this go down despite my dedication?
Until recently, I possessed a very developed sense of entitlement to my best things. I mostly expected them to live on their own island of protection, tucked away from harm, disease, disintegration. I bought the notion that my own attentiveness and control would maintain the island, and for good measure, I imagined that God Himself endorsed my system. Especially if that particular main thing was used in His service (double immunity!). I invoked “a hedge of protection” around my island like contemporary prayer circles taught me to. I read the books with Ten Steps for _______ and recorded every lecture on Eight Ways to _______ and implemented the basic protective measures the experts recommended. I assumed the cocktail of diligence, obedience, privilege, and vigilance would insulate my best things from harm.
It was a lovely fantasy. Not biblical or sensible or rational, but lovely.
The problem is life.
Last year, within six months, I had five main things go down, catastrophically. Two of them involved my children, easily the most treasured inhabitants on the island. All illusion of control, all assumed security—vanished. The details are private, but I can tell you this: we were rattled to the foundation of this family. It was like looking down at your feet on solid ground and watching it erode as you stood there. When you believe your island has been protected under your vigilant watch, then you discover your surveillance was flawed, or you find out one of your beloved inhabitants has struggled alone mightily, it will knock you so flat you fear you’ll never rise again.
It is a sobering realization that our children must live a real life in a real world, that they are targets, vulnerable to the same suffering that plagues us all. They will experience everything we never wanted for them: heartache, trauma, fear, isolation, agony, loss. They will not be the first generation to live a pain-free life. They will not be the only human beings to make it out unscathed. We can have it all in place, all in check, all under our thumb, and they are still not exempted from Jesus’s statement: “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). It is the most awful situation. What a horrible system.
During this same season, I noticed something strange happening with my hands. My knuckles began stiffening, my tendons started to knot, and my fingers began to draw in. Because I am very careful about my health, I completely ignored it. Sure, I had some simultaneous symptoms in my foot and shoulders, but I chalked it all up to “random weirdness” (a medical term I invented).
Finally, one evening on my porch, I asked my friends, “Do you think my hands look strange?” and held them up. Because my friend Tray is merciful, he shouted, “Gross! I can see that from here!” My friend Jenny Web-diagnosed me in four minutes with a condition called Dupuytren’s contracture, and an appointment with a hand orthopedist confirmed it.
Basically, I have an irreversible, degenerative condition almost exclusively found in old men. In fact, there are four ancillary symptoms that sometimes accompany DC and I have all but one, and the only reason I do not exhibit that manifestation is because it is penis related, so there you are. The upside to this diagnosis is that my orthopedist constantly tells me how young I am. (I am the clear Prom Queen of the Waiting Room.) The downside is that there is no cure or reversal and my hands are going down.
During these exact months, my brother was swept up in a massive group injustice, an absolute nightmare that stole an entire year of peace and destroyed dozens of lives and families. It traumatized several dear friends, and had it simply been a different day, my husband and dad would’ve been involved too. The injustice shook us to the core, and when there was nothing left in the tank, when we were all on empty, my mom was diagnosed with cancer.
Somewhere in the midst of this season, I got mad. I went from wailing grief to fury: Really? My kids? Of all the people! How could this be? How could so much struggle have taken place under my own roof? My brother and mom? My beloveds. This is unfair and wrong and low and mean, and I am not having it. I am not. I am livid. And my hands? They aren’t remotely as important as my family, but still! Now? This is how I work, God! For YOU. I am a writer, for the love of the land. I do not have space to process this physical loss right now. My family, my hands—this is the substance of my best work.
I had no idea how addicted to self-rule I was, or how much confidence I placed in false security. Stumbling around in the debris of dreams I thought I’d earned for me and mine was like being in a dark and lonely valley. I felt white-hot panic that everything was an illusion, it was all slipping, it was never even there. What else didn’t I know? What else was breaking down? I thought we’d paved a yellow brick road straight into our predictable futures. I had never been so scared. I would be in a perfectly ordinary setting and feel the searing tickle of fear snake up my spine and envelope my entire head until my brain felt on fire. I didn’t sleep a full night for months.
Somewhere deep within, from the place I’d deposited God’s Word my entire life, finally rose a quiet truth that laid the first paver stone out of anguish: “God has not given you a spirit of fear.” I do not mean this in any contrived, pithy Sunday School way. It emerged as the only solid piece of ground to stand on: fear is a liar. It cannot be relied upon to lead well, to lead out, or to lead forward. It is an untrustworthy emotion, not of God, and it never leads to health, wholeness, wisdom, or resurrection. And since fear was my primary state of mind, I knew everything I was imagining, concluding, and assuming was a lie. I wasn’t yet able to envision an alternative, but simply understanding that I was constructing a false narrative was the first pump of the brakes.