From Your Minister
Podcast: Download (6.2MB)
Subscribe: More
I told someone with a long-term illness—in this person’s case, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)—that I was writing a column on healing. Healing, she said. I’ve come to dislike that word intensely. When I questioned her further, she talked about all of the people, practicing all kinds of traditional and nontraditional medicine, who had promised healing if she followed their plans. Then, she said, when the CFS didn’t abate, many of them got angry at her and acted as if her continued sickness was somehow her own fault.
Healing’s become one of those words like diet, she said. Loaded with guilt and blame. I stay away from it.
Certainly, we have all heard the horror stories. The blind woman in my class at seminary who had been told by her fundamentalist Christian church that if she really accepted Jesus she would have “eyes to see.” The woman with cancer who is told that she’s obviously angry, and if she would just meditate on her second chakra and forgive her parents, the cancer would go away. Belief systems that blame the one who is in pain and in need of help. Not what I would call healing at all.
As I’ve aged, I’ve become highly suspicious of any belief system without a “pressure relief valve,” any closed circular system where there is only one way forward and those not on that path are bad, wrong, deserving of whatever they suffer. Such systems seem to hurt people, and the more personal the content of a belief system, the more pain is inflicted. Nothing is more personal than the state of our own bodies.
One pressure relief valve regarding healing is the radical notion that sometimes continued illness, or even death, is exactly what healing looks like. I have learned a great deal from CLF members who have experienced this kind of healing.
Ann Woldt, a long-term CLF member who has lived with multiple sclerosis for 31 years, says this:
I have come to the brink of death more times than I want to. Either the flare-up has been so severe that there seems to be little chance I’ll be able to enjoy any sort of meaningful life, or—as happened last summer—being told by medical professionals that my situation was so dire…that there was little they could do but offer palliative care…So another cycle through the grief process, coming once again to acceptance…but always this inner flame burning, reminding me that, until it actually goes OUT, we keep fighting. And so I have.
Since last summer, Ann has had a remarkable comeback. The service we began planning to be her memorial service evolved into a fabulous celebration of her life, with friends and relatives coming from across the country to share how Ann’s life has enhanced and transformed their own…and she has regained a quality of life she did not expect.
And yet, as Ann says:
There is healing…and then there is healing. I’ll never be healed of the MS…. The “healing” I’ve done regarding the MS is more healing of the spirit, healing of the soul…. The healing I experienced was much like the stages of grief, ending with acceptance. Lots of anger in the beginning, lots of unanswerable questions, starting with Why me??? Why did I get stuck with this? What have I done to deserve this?
And then a lot of bargaining with a non-existent god—take this away and I’ll give you—well, there’s not much to give. Reading about the stages of grief much later, I could walk my way through them…. [Acceptance means] coming to terms with the fact that the chronic illness isn’t going away. I have two basic choices in life—live with [MS], making life as livable as possible, or die.
I asked Ann, admittedly with some sense of trepidation that it might be a really offensive question, if MS had brought her wisdom or benefits of any kind. She replied:
Benefits? No. But I am certainly a much better person, flawed as I am, than I would be if I hadn’t been dealing with this for 31 years.
More patient, more tolerant, more accepting of people. More open to others’ pain and suffering. More resolute. I don’t take a lot of time dithering about things—life is too short, and most issues are really too small…. I’m more inner focused. More centered…. I’ve learned what I can and cannot do, and while sometimes I get that wrong, I feel I am the best judge of what my life is like day to day, and what I can or can’t manage… Life is too short. Indeed, eat dessert first. Do what you can to live life as fully as you can. Don’t mourn too long over what you can’t do or can no longer do, and rejoice in what you can.
As we reflect on healing this month, that seems like great advice for people of all physical abilities and experiences. Do what you can to live life as fully as you can. Perhaps, in a nutshell, that is the definition of healing.
- From Your Minister - July 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - June 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - May 1, 2020
