Redemption now? Redemption later? - Oct. 1, 2014

My box has been filled to overflowing.  I like it.  I like the warm fuzzies.  Fat babies, soft newborn skin new on mommy’s chest.  Long awaited.  Prayed for. Surprised with.  Joyed over.  And the pics of grandbabies, apologies for the obnoxiousness of dumped whole albums on social media for the world to see, but none of us perceive joy as obnoxious.  We just lament that we are not there to squeeze the warm flesh ourselves, share a bit in a grandparent’s pride.

But there’s other stuff there, hiding in my feed, lingering in my email.  A different joy.  I’ve shared some of their names in the past, but I can’t capture them with a lens like I can Asa.  Sometimes hospital protocol, privacy acts are so restrictive that you and I can’t even venture into their world unless they venture out.  But they followed us home.  Not to be insulting, but it’s sort of like a friendly mutt with mange that loves so unconditionally, that you attach to with a first love such that you can’t forget them, leave them out of your story.  So you make more space.  You think you don’t have more space because you’ve already lived and written three lifetimes of chapters of your own saga, but you do, you shove over and make room for more.

We don’t know what to do with them.  We do.  We pray.  We wake up at night.  We sorrow, we wonder about their eternities, we wonder about their now.  We sit here in healing and they still sit in the dust, some surrounded by friends, some not, wondering when or if theirs is coming.  Is redemption now or later or for some, ever? But you feel every ounce of their sorrow, every ounce of their momentary joys, want to know their winding story.

I want to introduce them to you.  A few I have.  A few I can.  So many remain private, some by choice.  Suffering can be so so private.  I want to show you their funny hair, the face of their spouses who are run ragged, the wonderings of the mothers who waffle between the hope of a cure and the hope of eternity.

Many tell me that they couldn’t ever work the wards where we’ve been.  I couldn’t.  I had to be there.  But, “had to” has gradually become, I choose to.  Part of it is because you just can’t choose not to, but part of it is a selfish unwillingness to run from the flickering joy that rides alongside suffering.  No one asks for pain, no one begs for the fellowship of suffering.  Ever.  But in some weird and holy inexplicable way, it’s irresistible, like the sad dog illustration, joy unhinged.

So, no pics today.  How can you capture this?  It’s only in the eyes and in the heart and it’s so personal that I’m not sure it can be stolen that way. I don’t know how to give you a diatribe of thankfulness here, other than this is something different to learn to be thankful for, the privilege of knowing others.  But, I am giving you a list of names.  There are SOOOO many more.  I hate to list them because I might, am positively, leaving off some.  And no list shows the trickle down to the aching parents, the siblings, the grandparents, the friends, the nurses, the doctors, those who feel every ounce of suffering alongside.  So, for Caroline, Kevin, Brendan, William, Mark, Jake, Tacey, please pray.  Pray desperately and continually. Some are dying, some are living, and I suppose it doesn’t matter which way they seem to be headed because none of us know our day or hour, how the game plays out individually, we can only strangely rejoice in the One who redeems now or later.