Regressive Revelation

Over the last year the Lord has been taking things away from me. First He took away my job when I got fired from not one but two jobs within 6 weeks of each other. This was the first time I ever got terminated from a job, and it happened twice! Needless to say I was distraught. He has since seen fit not to send me another opportunity besides a part time gig teaching at my uncle’s Christian school. This is not enough to pay the bills and since I’m broke I’ve had to rely on other people to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach at times. My housemate has had to pay more than half of the rent/bills and this has led to increased tension between us. I feel unwelcome in my own house, so that serenity of sanctuary has been taken also.

I had been attending a bible study with two other guys from my church in KC, which was a great time of fellowship and friendship. We would hang out once every other week or so to play games in addition to the weekly meeting. It was a good group, relaxed and playful yet serious and thoughtful during small group discussions of The Ragamuffin Gospel. That ended in January, and I’ve only hung out with them once or twice since. The Lord removed that from my life as well.

And finally, my body is breaking down at an alarming rate. First, my overall weight is far too high and I have been trying unsuccessfully to lose weight for several years now. This has contributed to chronic back problems and gout. Whether or not this underlying condition led to some of the more recent and more debilitating maladies is unclear, though it certainly hasn’t helped matters. In February I walked 18 holes of golf and my big toe got red and painful, infected in fact. It remained so until my sister’s fiancée volunteered to cut open my toe and snip off the ingrown toenail. This he did in my parents’ basement after giving me two prescription painkillers, which didn’t kick in until halfway through the procedure. He did both sides of the toenail and cut a goodly portion of each. Unfortunately the toe remained infected and so I had to visit a foot doctor who gave me 3 painful numbing shots and cut off a third of the toenail to get out the ingrown part. She gave me antibiotics which I took, but the toe is still slightly red and painful, which suggests that the infection isn’t gone or that the toenail is ingrown on the other side and therefore requires more surgery.

A few weeks ago, however, I began to do exercises, trying to work myself into golf shape, which would allow me to walk 18 holes of golf without collapsing in pain, and thereby to save some money and get some exercise.

This involves an exercise called Hindu Squat, where you lower yourself down on your haunches repeatedly. I had been practicing this for the last few weeks before the toe flared up, but had gone easy on walking and favored the affected left leg when walking. I did a set of 100 on Wednesday and then 120 on Thursday, a new record. Friday I got up with pain in my left knee over the kneecap. It wasn’t too bad, just when I bent the knee so I did 60 squats and played golf (in a cart). I hobbled around the course, and by bedtime the knee was agonizing. I could not bend the knee without excruciating pain.

I called my parents and my dad came down to assess the situation. I could not bend the knee enough to get in and out of my car, so we decided I should return to Kirksville with him and get some treatment and medical opinion from a family friend and fellow church member Michael Lockwood. Dr. Lockwood diagnosed bursitis, an inflammation of the bursa sac, and recommended rest, elevation, ice, and compression. He gave me a knee brace and some special anti inflammatory pills from India. For the next week I spent my days with my knee bound and iced and raised. As a consequence of this, my other knee also began to hurt, as did my Achilles tendon. These problems are mostly gone, though I am leary of their return especially since…

I have recently had the other edge of the left toenail removed, requiring more painful injections and ministrations. Hopefully this will be the final requirement to get this toe healthy, though the other big toe is starting to show signs of infection. I’m hoping that this will go away with another round of antibiotics.

On the night where the knee began to hurt, I lay in bed and silently screamed at God. I complained and questioned, comparing my lot to Job, one degradation after another. First the livelihood and prosperity is removed, then the physical health is attacked. Why?, I wondered, fully cognizant of the famous response God gives when He answers Job’s pleas with some pointed questions of His own. When my dad came down for that weekend, we had dinner at my uncle’s house, and both my uncle and my dad prayed over me. I was overwhelmed with emotion, physically and mentally wrung out, suffering from spiritual vertigo. The presence of the Lord was palpable, the empathy was like a swirling cloud blocking out my sense of outrage. Comfort sprung up from the desert of my blistered spirit.

Then the Lord started healing me.

First He healed my leg, my knee. The knee is mostly healed, though still sore occasionally when I squat. The leg and other knee are feeling fine. The toe is healing nicely from the first surgery and should be fully restored thanks to the most recent surgery. I even received a word from the Lord about my weight loss struggles.

That’s the physical. The material side has radically changed as well. I got a job teaching at a vocational technical college here in Kansas City for a month, starting May 11. This may turn into a full time job in the fall. I may also have a line on a job teaching high school literature at a Christian school in Indianapolis, thanks to a friend’s recommendation.

Also, when I was up in Kirksville over Easter because of my knee, a cousin of mine came into town to visit her brother. She works at a Christian publishing company in Chicago, Tyndale House, and we had a long talk about the industry, among other things. I have been interested in a job in the publishing industry for about a decade; I’ve sent myriad applications only to be rebuffed time and again. But my cousin said there might be an internship over the summer I might capitalize on. So a dream of mine might be realized thanks to a connection through my cousin.

Now, if not for my knee, I wouldn’t have been in Kirksville to visit with my cousin, so that was one divine appointment that came out of the experience. But more than that was the absolute stripping of everything I rely on, all my crutches and illusions. I was completely aware of the fragility of my life, my lifestyle, the well-being of my body. I had two options: to spiral into depression, blaming God for my woes and self-destruction or self-pitying (which was my initial reaction, that first night of the bursitis); or to acknowledge that I am unable to even keep my body from breaking down on me, and throwing myself completely on the grace and mercy of God, trusting Him to live through me, to handle my pain (not remove it) for me, and to enable me to praise Him and thank Him in the process. Thanks to my recent reading of Bill Gilham’s excellent book What God Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity, I submitted myself to Him and said “This body is Yours, Lord. Do with it what You will. Help me to endure with You and through You.”

Two Sunday’s ago, a guest speaker at my church New Day gave an excellent sermon on the Ethiopian eunuch and his encounter with Phillip. Steve Carpenter, the speaker, illustrated the preperation of the Ethiopian for that encounter with Phillip, the trials, disappointments, and disillusions that he had suffered up until that moment. He talked about the passage of Scripture the man was reading being an exact foretelling of Jesus, and how the rest of the book of Isaiah was full of passages and allusions directly applicable to that Ethiopian eunuch. It was a brilliant and wonderful explanation of the provision of God, the intricate and intimate knowledge and caring that God wrought to bring the African eunuch to the point where He could use him, convert him. You must go to newdaykc.org and download the sermon, it’s marvelous. But this really resonated with me and my circumstances, giving me hope that whatever else happens, the Lord is using this suffering and drought to bring me to the point where when He speaks I will be listening, I will be able to answer in the manner that pleases Him. And I think that’s happening. I don’t know what the future holds, what more I’ll go through in dealing with physical and vocational challenges, but my spirit has been bouyed by the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, and that He will work out my salvation through me, in spite of and along with my own actions.

I close with this poem that has struck me over and over again recently.

GOD KNOWS WHAT HE’S ABOUT

When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man,
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!
How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!
How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And with every purpose fuses him;
By every act induces him
To try His splendor out —
God knows what He’s about.
—Author Unknown

Indeed.