Several months ago, I was enveloped in the deep blackness of my autoimmune disorder. I had lived for several years with minimal symptoms following my diagnosis, but this past fall, it sucked me under.
Piercing joint pain shot through my back and hips. A heavy blanket of exhaustion fell over me. It was too much to boil water. Looking back, it is hard to explain even to myself how lost I was to the effects of this disease. It stole me from my husband, my children, and even from myself.
I had a recurring nightmare as a child that I was crawling behind the other children, trying to keep up, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. They would close, no matter how I fought the urge. That dream is the nearest example I have to explain the experience of the exhaustion that overtook me.
Worse than the physical pain and all-encompassing exhaustion was the fact that even if I could push past the pain and muster the energy to move, I simply didn’t want to. It was as if someone had turned the off switch to all of my peace and joy, and the only emotion I could experience was misery.
I spent weeks on the couch, unable to will myself forward, too tired to try, wondering where I had gone and who I was now. I knew I was still inside myself, somewhere deep down, but that me was small, muted, and inaccessible.
Thankfully, I received some terrible test results. These test results told my doctor that I was very, very sick (that much was apparent), and I had to follow a rigorous regimen to heal all the ways in which my body was going wrong.
I would have done anything — with glee — if there was even a chance of escaping the misery.
That regimen included stopping all exercise save one daily walk in the sunshine, switching prescriptions (the last one was making things worse), many supplements (20 pills and one dropper a day), frequent rest to remind my body it was not, in fact, under constant threat of bear attack, and adding in nourishing foods like coconut water and seaweed, and abstaining from all grains, legumes, eggs, processed foods, nuts and seeds, refined sugars, alcohol, and dairy. This is the part where I offer the obligatory disclaimer that this is merely my experience, not medical advice.
I was not a fun dinner party guest. I even had to make myself my own separate Thanksgiving dinner to avoid being plunged back into the deep pit of despair.
But it worked. By Thanksgiving, I was not only well enough to boil water, but I prepared five dishes and two pies that complied with all my new restrictions. I relished the joy and relief of being myself again.
Of course, it wasn’t without difficulties. “What can you even eat?” was a question I got asked. A lot.
“Meat and vegetables,” I answered cheerfully (or as close to cheerfully as I could pretend, depending on how many times I’d already answered this same question for the present inquirer).
“I could never do that,” was often the bewildered and pitying response.
“You could if you felt bad enough,” came my response, the memory of desperate, anguished days surfacing, along with the gripping trepidation that this respite was temporary, and that any day I’d be pulled back under without warning.
Only now, several months later, I am beginning to wonder about that last response.
By the grace of God, I am learning to manage this condition and most days, I am myself and peace and joy flow naturally. My flare ups are not as severe, involve only one or a few symptoms, and the terrible blackness appears to have vanished.
As I have encountered others who suffer from similar or adjacent conditions, I find that what I had said in the past is not, in fact, true: not everyone who suffers greatly is willing to make the necessary sacrifices to recover. And of course not every kind of suffering is something that can be ameliorated by lifestyle changes — but many things are.
And this is true of the spiritual life as well. There is so much pain and loneliness that result from our own insistence on clinging to anger and resentment and our own sin.
Or we want to go our way morally, departing from the teachings of Jesus as handed to us by his Church. We insist on our way, and we get burned. You name, and we do it.
We have premarital sex and get our hearts ripped out.
We cohabitate and six years later, we’re left alone and much less of a catch than we were before the relationship started.
We contracept and the tiny joys meant to refine us on our path to holiness never appear, our silent hallways never echoing with the pitter patter of little love escaped from bedtime for just one more drink of water.
Or we do everything “right,” but we do it with resentment in our hearts, failing to cultivate the virtues that make a life of self-giving love such a sweet and easy yoke.
Instead of reveling in gratitude for the sweet moments, we covet our “me” time.
Instead of easing the burdens of a cranky spouse, we bristle at the obligation to love them in good times and in bad.
Instead of relishing the wondrous gift of the other, we foster irritation at their every imperfection, conveniently forgetting all those who remain patient with our own.
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“Do you want to be healed?”
It’s a deceptively simple question. Of course we want to be healed. We just don’t always want to be healed enough.
As this reflection is brewing in my brain, I discuss it with my 8-year-old. I explain to her about the man waiting by the pool at Bethesda. Actually, she has just seen this scene depicted on The Chosen, so I don’t need to explain much. But I do ask her to consider how it might have felt to be that man, waiting his whole life for someone to carry him into the pool so that he could be healed. What must he have thought about this man Jesus who showed up and instructed him to simply pick up his mat and walk.
Was he irritated? Impatient? Annoyed? He knew what he needed to be healed, and Jesus is standing there offering him a different way.
Was he willing to try it Jesus’s way? Or did he say to himself, “I could never do that?”
At this point, my daughter pipes up excitedly from the back seat, “It’s just like me, Mom!”
“What do you mean?” I ask her.
“I prayed my whole life to be healed from my eczema. And we’ve had that medicine all along. If I had just listened to you and done what you said, I could have been healed years ago.”
Out of the mouths of babes.
Do you want to be healed?
We all have our illnesses. How many of us have the courage to say, “yes”?
Whatever it is, however you thought it was supposed to be healed, give it to Jesus now. Surrender it all, even the cure you thought you needed. Leave it all behind.
It’s time to rise, pick up your mat, and walk.