Painting: open hands/letting go

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit” says the Lord of Hosts. (Zechariah 4:6)

At the end of my last newsletter, I was healing and thought I was done. But no, after two weeks I went for a follow up appointment with an orthopedic surgeon. The infection was still there and he wanted to go back in and remove the cyst sac and scrape out the infection. So four days later, I was back in the hospital, admitted. It would be overnight at least and he wanted to keep me until the right antibiotic would be found.

Waiting – in the hospital.
First there is the waiting on an empty stomach for the surgery. It was noon before the surgery finally took place. Then I began to see and experience all kinds of waiting:

• To be able to eat again
• For a nurse to respond to a call bell
• For pain to go away
• For recovery from medication given during surgery
• For healing to happen
• For a doctor to come by with his/her prognosis
• For a prescription
• For a good meal
• For time to pass
• For visitors to come
• For the okay to go home

In a hospital there is no control - 

• Of when the doctor will come by
• Of how long it takes to heal
• (Sometimes even) Of bodily functions
• Of all the above

Vulnerability is high and you have to trust the doctors and nurses.

I had a couple of roommates. One who had had hip surgery and complications afterwards. She was bed ridden and needed a lot of help. She was in her 80’s. Physio came by every day just to get her to work on standing.

On my third day in the hospital, I wrote this poem from her point of view as I watched her situation in the hospital:

Vulnerability
Stuck in this chair
Waiting for a nurse
“call” bell is dinging
No one responds, no one hears
Waiting an hour
Hoping they get here before I make a mess
Where are they?
Don’t they care?
Can’t wait much longer
…So uncomfortable
Roommates are listening
…commiserating
But they cannot help
Shake my head,
…helpless
…vulnerable
In come the nurses
Finally!
Lift in position to move me to the chair with a hole.
Lift…
…Aagh!
Too late!
What a mess!

By the fourth day in the hospital, I was pacing the hallway. In the last newsletter I wrote about the difficulty of vulnerability, but I found it became even harder the longer I had to wait. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I paced the hallways waiting. I was frustrated, impatient ready to cry and realized that this is how I am with God. I wrote in my journal that day as I was waiting for the doctor to come by and let me go home:

“ Honestly, I do not like the lack of control when waiting for You, Lord. I don’t like giving up control. I don’t like the vulnerability in crying – I would rather hide my feelings. I don’t even have it as bad as some people here. Lord, I confess, I do not want to give up my control. I want to feel important and valid. I don’t like being a “nobody.” I confess, I do not like being vulnerable, weak and teary. I’d rather be sunshine than rain. Strengthen my faith that I can let go of control. It’s not about me. What does it mean to rest in Jesus, trusting in him, letting go?”

I am currently working on this painting, “Letting Go,” as I work through these feelings and experience. I started this painting last week at the Art Vocabulary of the Soul retreat, where I shared this journey. Our weekend focus was on God as our strength in our weakness. And he is. And I can rest in that as soon as I let go.

Painting: redemption/Transformation

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit” says the Lord of Hosts. (Zechariah 4:6)

Weakness and failure, our world looks down on these and on those who display weakness and failure. Yet, we love the story of the underdog, the hero who rises above his past; stories of redemption, of overcoming failure and achieving success.

There is a different story of redemption that hinges on our admitting our weakness and failure, our need for a Savior. It is so easy to fall into the trap of self-sufficiency, hiding our weaknesses even from ourselves, from myself. When I stop hiding, I can actually begin to love those around me, and not worry about me. When we are worried about our position or power, or place, we have no room to love those around us. I cannot know that “His grace is sufficient for me,” if I do not admit I need God’s gift of grace.

This past month, I watched a cyst that had been on my back for a long time, begin to double and triple in size. It became painful to move my left arm. I do not like to rest and ask for help. I do like to act and do. I had to acknowledge my need to seek help from doctors, ask questions, rest at home. It was a long ordeal involving several weeks, trips to the doctor and the emergency room. I had x-rays, an ultrasound, and even an MRI before they were ready to do something and by that time it was heavily infected, and I had spent almost two days at the hospital. I am on the mend now, and both the wound and the infection are healing, and I am grateful to God and the doctors for their work.

With all of this I recognize that I do not like to be ill. It was a struggle to not feel guilty while resting, my “to do” list is long. I get sore and tired still. I feel like a wimp. Where did that come from? I think I need to accomplish something to be fulfilled. God isn’t waiting for me to accomplish something, or become great. God is inviting me to be with him, to walk with him. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.” Why is it so hard to let go and just trust him?

I have been reading slowly through Madeleine L’Engle’s book, The Rock that is Higher: Story as Truth. She wrote:
“It is only when I am able to acknowledge my own failures that I am free to be part of a community, and part of that freedom is to be able to accept that the community itself is going to fail. At the very least, it is going to change, and it may die, and this, in worldly terms, is failure.
The church in our village offered me community and so redeemed my failures as wife, mother, writer.”
It isn’t just God whom I need to trust, but to be willing to open myself up to others around me in my community. As Paul said in his second letter to the Corinthians, “for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

I have been working on a different painting this summer, Redemption.