Family circles

Looking back, I realize I failed to follow up on a line of thought in a previous post, and that loop needs to be closed.

I said that despite my pastor's gentle encouragement, I didn't cry when my mom died.

For the record, that situation was rectified on the Sunday after the funeral, when the freakin' dam burst.

That same pastor, Dennis Butts, had come over and sat down next to me. He asked me if I remembered what he had told me earlier, that it was OK to cry. I told him I did remember, but that's just not the way my grief was coming out. He just sat there with me for a couple of minutes, neither one of us saying anything.

"It's OK to cry."

Pastor Butts is a big bear of a man at better than 6 feet tall and better than 200 pounds. He carries a large, quiet, powerful presence, much as my dad did. That presence began to overshadow me that day on the front pew -- enveloping me, drawing me in, surrounding me, subsuming me. I felt like I was inside a small, dark closet, in the deepest shadows behind the long winter coats. I felt safe.

That's when I absolutely lost it, sobbing inconsolably on that front pew for 20 minutes after the service ended.

I could hear people chatting, some stopping to ask MLW what was wrong with me, random people placing a hand on my shoulder or offering a word of comfort, and the tears and snot pouring out. Someone finally had the good sense and compassion to stuff a couple of tissues into my hand.

That day it became clearer to me than ever that I had a new family. It didn't replace my birth family but augmented it. I felt safe enough to cry like a baby in front of these people, and they responded with love, comfort, empathy and compassion.

Less than three weeks later, when my father also died, my tears were warmed up and ready to go, and go they did. My hysterical reaction at the hospital remains one of the more memorable entries in my family's grief scrapbook.

But it's all good. MLW and my sister Sheila stayed with me to comfort me while I was treated (read: sedated) in the emergency room, and no one made fun of me when we eventually made it back to the house, where we sat around the dining room table in stunned disbelief.

Both my families had their finest hours in the days and weeks that followed. My birth family, without exception, demonstrated kindness and grace to a degree that I had never seen in many of them before, and it helped heal some old wounds in me. My church family, which I already knew to be full of kindness and grace, proved generous and gentle as well, weeping and grieving with us, taking on themselves the loss of two people they had never known.

I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge as well the kindness of my co-workers, who sent stacks of cards and food and sent flowers to the funeral home and covered my extended absence from work without a word of complaint.

It's true that there's a lot of bad stuff and a lot of bad people in this world. But these moments and these memories remind me that God looks after his own:

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy
dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with
singing;
... You gave abundant showers, O God;
You refreshed your weary inheritance. -- Psalm 68:5-6a;9

I apologize for writing so much about death and grief lately. It's a season the Spirit has sent me into, and I'm walking through it. Which reminds me of something another member of my church family, a man named Brother Herman, said a couple of years ago:

"Psalm 23 says, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death ...'
Notice that it says 'walk through'; it doesn't say 'set up camp in.'"

Thanks for that, Brother Herman. Thanks to all my brothers and sisters. And thanks, God, for them.

An issue of blood

The best example of someone going to Jesus and literally grabbing hold of his healing power is the woman with the “issue of blood.” Her story is told in the fifth chapter of Mark and the eighth chapter of Luke.

This poor woman had a condition that was not only physically painful but also socially stigmatizing, and it had been going on for years. She had nonstop menstrual bleeding, which under Old Testament law kept her perpetually “ceremonially unclean” (Leviticus 15:25-27).

Think for a moment about the isolation and loneliness this would mean. No one could touch her without becoming unclean, and anything she touched became unclean. Think what it would be like for you if you could never give or receive a hug, or even a handshake or a pat on the back. Or use a shopping cart. Or pick up produce at the market and put it back down. Or walk on a crowded sidewalk. Or get your hair cut. Or go to a concert or a game. Or a restaurant. Or school. Or work. Or church. And forget about meeting someone special, falling in love and starting a family.

You are condemned to life in solitary confinement with invisible walls.

Imagine the shame and degradation that would come with that kind of shunning, along with the fear of embarrassingly bleeding through her clothes. Not to mention the terrible cramps that must have been a source of constant misery.

The medical treatments of the day were probably quite crude and excruciatingly painful; the NIV says she "had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse."

And the Word says this went on for twelve years. A lot of people would kill themselves under that kind of stress, and who could blame them?

But this woman chose life, and she knew where to find it.

Can you imagine the courage it took for her to leave her house and venture to that crowded marketplace where Jesus was visiting? To press through the throng, this mob of strangers who would revile her and recoil from her if they knew her terrible secret?

But nothing else had worked, and she was desperate. This might be her only chance. She waded into the crowd and pressed through. She didn’t seek to speak to the man or ask anything of him, but just hoped to grasp the hem of his garment.

And she did it. The Bible says she was behind Jesus and touched the edge of this cloak, and immediately she felt healing flow from him into her body.

She thought that would be the end of it, that she could disappear back into the crowd and slip away, but with Jesus you always get more than you bargain for.

He took notice of her.

“Who touched my clothes?” he said (as if he didn’t know). His disciples practically laughed at him: “You have all these thousands of people pressing in on you, and you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

Yes, thousands were pressing in on him, but only one had truly touched him.

Have you reached out to Jesus with a passion and a fervor that will make you stand out from the crowd?

I’ll have more about this in a future post.