If You've Ever Felt Your Dreams Crush Against Disappointment (Part 2)

This is that continuation I promised from the last blog post I did. You know, two weeks later than planned. ;)

We were sitting outside the hospital cafeteria in the sunshine, the air uncommonly sticky for California. My husband and I were trying to keep busy, to do something besides think and feel. My eyes were swollen, evidence that I was not as collected or as calm as I might have looked sitting there skimming through my phone.

Just fifteen minutes prior, I watched my almost-three-year old get wheeled towards the operating room. And even though it was a minor outpatient procedure, I am not so sure any procedure feels like a minor amount of weight on a momma’s heart.  

It made me think of how when us kids would talk of leaving home or of grand global adventures, my mom would wrap us up in her arms and with both laughter and sadness in her eyes she would declare, “Oh, no. I don’t think I can let you do that. My apron strings just don’t reach that far.”

The gorilla-sized tears and the ache in my stomach seemed to indicate that my apron strings didn’t reach operating rooms. The nurse had told me not to worry, that Jed was in good hands. But the truth is, I wanted Jed in my hands.

While we were sitting, waiting, Mike was listening to an interview of Jim Caviezel on accepting the role of Jesus in the Passion of the Christ. I wasn’t paying much attention. I may have even thought to myself what a random thing to listen to at this exact moment. Wasn’t that a decade ago?

But then Jim Caviezel said something that settled on my ears and demanded my attention.

“We all want resurrection; nobody wants suffering.”

Five minutes later, my husband got a call from the doctor. He asked for us to return to the room.

Somehow Mike instinctively knew to go without me. He insisted that I stay and that he would call me if I was needed. I sat attempting to write about Caviezel’s truth nugget, but really all I could think about was Jed.

Mike came back after the longest ten minutes. While prepping Jed for surgery, the doctor discovered something else that needed surgery… something that was more important and pressing than the original procedure for which we had scheduled Jed.

So, in total, my baby got three procedures done in one surgery. Three incisions, three bandages, three wounds from which to recover.

{In case you’ve been counting, that third one was a minor one that they asked if they could do when we first arrived, and another story altogether.}

I felt grateful that we had taken him in and that Jed was being spared from a much bigger problem later on all because of this doctor’s keen eye.

I wanted Jed better. But I didn’t want him to suffer.

But even my momma heart knew that I had to let him go, that the better meant the suffering.

Because it’s true: “We all want resurrection; [but] nobody wants suffering.”

I don’t fully understand suffering. I have a really long list of questions for God about suffering that begin with the word “Why.”

But Christ, he suffered. Lashings, beatings, thorns scraping skull, nails like railroad spikes into wrists and feet, and then he died. And when the stench of death would have just began to take him, when hope would have seemed lost, when resignation would have held Christ’s followers… Jesus resurrected.

Like the barley kernel at the back drop of the story of Ruth: cut down, trampled under the feet of donkeys, and crushed under stones, and just when the barley kernel might have felt like it’s purpose was done for, like it was crushed beyond recognition, the harvester threw it into the air and a beautiful usable kernel fell to the ground to be carried off to the mill for flour.

Because God plants beautiful purposes in chaffy human hearts.

It is through trials and pain and times that feel hopeless that separate the kernel of purpose from the human shell it lies in. And God doesn’t abandon us in our hardest times, he is waiting for that separation of chaff and dream, of human and spirit so that He can raise back up to life. Crushing and raising up are both important processes and equally dependent upon the other. Crushing seems cruel without the raising up; raising up is pointless without the crushing.

Perhaps, we would like to think that our holiness is wrapped up in substance of our ideals, our dreams. I remembered being a rosy-cheeked newlywed full of “holy” dreams, of two sharing the gospel together, of raising children, of a house that could be full of God’s love. But our holiness is something that comes about in the refining fire of when our reality and our dreams don’t match. Holiness is wrought in the struggle, in the surrender, in the telling God that I choose Him over all of it, even over my best-intentioned dreams. That I want Him and all of Him and there isn’t a thing here in this life that could possibly compare to the goodness of simply knowing Him. That He is God and I am woman and while I don’t understand His ways, surely I can choose to accept that I won’t comprehend them but that I can TRUST Him.

This is probably not the most fun material to read. The truth is, it’s not just suffering that proceeds resurrection; it’s death that proceeds resurrection. And this is hard. It’s hard to listen to, and it’s a thousand times harder to walk through. But I can say when you surrender, lay that dream on the altar, I do believe I can echo Paul with absolute certainty: God is exceedingly and abundantly able to do above and beyond all that you ask or think…. And that no human heart can conceive the things God has prepared for those who love Him. (Ephesian 3:20 & 1 Corinthians 2:9)

Amen.

By Grace,

Amanda Conquers