Do You Want to Be Made Well?
Since my mother’s departure in 2010, my family and I have gone through numerous phases of grief. Although the grief resurfaces from time to time and will never fade away completely, something has recently changed on my end: my willingness to move on. I’d like to start by referencing a passage from the Gospel that I see myself in:
Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” – John 5:5-6
In these verses there are two things that strike me: the duration of time the man was bound by his infirmity, and the Lord’s question to him. For thirty-eight years this man was broken, watching others come and go as he looked on for help. They received healing and left happily, while he sat there in a never-ending cycle, most likely loathing himself and his situation.
Then someone, whom he had never seen before, walked over to him and asked if he wanted to be made well. The inquiry seemed quite ridiculous, almost rhetorical, yet his response sheds some light on Christ’s purpose for asking him the question.
The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” – John 5:7
Simply put, he doesn’t answer the question! The man expresses his grievance, perhaps in the same manner as he had since his illness began. He continues in his cycle of pain and isn’t able to fix it, even if he tried. He has lost hope; to him, being well is no longer an option. Jesus, knowing his despair, answers him with yet another peculiar statement. This time, it changes his life.
Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. – John 5:8-9
What? Imagine having a conversation in which the questions and answers are not even remotely pertinent to one another. How frustrating! To make matters even more absurd, in this dialogue, Jesus tells the man to get up and leave the place where he has long been confined, as if he hasn’t labored fruitlessly to crawl away from it for the majority of his life.
In this perplexing account, we see the magnificence of our God. We witness His good nature and His awesome power at work. This man, who was disabled both physically and emotionally, was healed by our Lord’s command instantly. The man did not even request that Christ heal him! Our Lord nevertheless looked at him, saw his pain, and in His compassion restored his life.
Personally, my life since mom’s death has mirrored this man’s paralysis. Every event and opportunity was marred by anguish, until my focus changed. Christ asked the man if he wanted to be made well, not because he needed permission to heal him, but to redirect his attention towards the truth. If we wish to be healed, if we want our burdens to be lightened, if we long to be renewed, if we desire to be made whole, we must turn to the Source of our being and put our lives in His hands. In His embrace, we are no longer victims; we are owners of newfound life, and are given the power to overcome whatever it is that afflicts us.
It is irrelevant how long you’ve felt hopeless, or how many times you’ve tried to get better and couldn’t. What matters is that you do not shut Him out, that you accept His healing and His grace, and that you eagerly work to discover His purpose for you in whatever events occur in your life. We do not choose whether we experience difficulties in this life. They will find their way to us, in various forms, irrespective of how zealously we endeavor to prevent them. We do, however, decide the extent we let our Lord heal us from them; we determine how deeply these pains can affect our lives.
I share this story today, on the eight-year memorial of my mother’s departure to heaven, so that I don’t waste thirty more years crippled by despair, and so that you, my dear reader, take the opportunity to effect change in your own life, if you believe that it is needed. Ask the Lord for healing from whatever it is that agonizes you, and when you do, please remember to pray for me, too.
My new reality was shocking; utterly different from the one in my most cherished memories. The only images I could vividly see were the difficult ones. I was the last person to see mom before she passed away. On Friday, I went on a retreat with my church. It was a hymns convention (go figure). I returned Sunday afternoon and was drained. At that point, mom had been in the hospital for over a month, so I didn’t think it was urgent to visit her that day. Throughout the eight years of her illness, she would be admitted and stay in the hospital for a month or two, going through surgical procedures, chemotherapy, radiation –you name it. This was a routine for me, and it always ended with her returning home.
It was my junior year of high school and my studies took precedence over anything else going on in my life. I had an exam in my literature course on Monday morning so I chose to rest Sunday night. After my exam ended the next day, a family friend called me and said: “Hey, I’m going to visit mom today. Do you want to come?” I responded: “Sure, why not?”
On the way to the hospital we discussed what hymns I had learned at the convention, and some discrepancies that existed between different recorded sources — as I still do now. I walked into the hospital room — a room I had become all too familiar with by then — kissed mom’s forehead, and sat down and sang to her for what was close to two hours. She was intubated at the time; I never got responses, but I knew she heard me. It was getting late, so I decided to call it a night. I rose from my seat, kissed her again, and walked out.
My family usually took shifts at the hospital, so that we could all try to maintain a sense of normalcy. Mom’s eldest sister was with her that night. She called my father just as I arrived at my house and said: “I think you should be here.” About an hour later, my brother and I were worried, so my brother called dad to check on her. As he held the phone to his ear, I heard my father say: “Mom went to heaven, habibi.” She had waited for me to come say my goodbyes.
In tears, I embraced my brother, and the only words that came out of my mouth were: “Thank God.” It was over; she was at rest. She wouldn’t be in pain anymore, and I was so happy for her; though I had no idea what it would do to us. Feebly, we sang a hymn of thanksgiving at home, then I returned to the hospital to continue singing and praising God for His work with us. That picture was the only one on repeat, in much more detail, every single day.
The world kept changing and my life never stood still, even though I desperately needed it to. Seasons turned over, rivers I sat by continued to flow, and people around me came and went. I was the odd one out who couldn’t keep up. She wasn’t sitting at the dinner table anymore; she wasn’t home on Mondays making sure that I played the piano and practiced reading and writing Arabic before dad got home. She wasn’t checking up on where I was, she probably had no idea, and didn’t care for that matter. I couldn’t fathom that she wouldn’t be at my graduation, even though it was her dying wish. Holidays became a mix of destitution and misplacement. The list goes on and on. The only way to get by was to subconsciously suppress those fond memories and force myself to accept this current reality, albeit devoid of any color or warmth.
There was only one brutal constant: pain. It was present regardless of the circumstance, whether things were well or not. In the midst of friends and family, it remained. At work, in service, during studies and in relationships, it insisted on afflicting my mind and heart. It never went away. I was exhausted, defeated to the point of despair, but when I hit rock bottom, with my back against the wall, I realized that I was in need of drastic change.
So, I requested that God turn this year into one of healing and renewal. God hasn’t taken away the pain at all. In His wisdom, He’s doing something more. In these past two months, He has been opening my eyes to where the pain lies, He has shown me where it’s affecting my life, and He has pointed out what some of my triggers are. Going through all these memories and emotions from scratch has not been pleasant in the slightest, but this time, it’s not in hopelessness. By His grace, I’m trying to use them to move towards being liberated. If you’ll allow me, I’d like to elaborate on this.
On a particularly miserable day, one of my dearest friends sent me a video of Joe Biden speaking to families of deceased war veterans. At the time of the speech, this man had been through an incredible amount of adversity, losing his wife and daughter in an accident that turned his life upside down. What struck me most was that I wasn’t alone. He spoke about something that I had termed and described to my friends as “the black hole.” It was the worst physical and emotional pain I have ever felt. It was totally debilitating: I couldn’t eat or drink, had no desire to talk, screaming on the inside without making a sound. I was in awe that someone else knew what the black hole was. Someone else had that same void in his chest that I’d been walking around with for so long. His message to the families was uplifting, though he made it evident that the pain would never cease to exist. The days of the black hole would always be as if the tragedy had just occurred, but those days would space out: they get further and further apart, if you let them. So again the question stands: “Do you want to be made well?”
One of the things that I knew had progressively gotten worse in my life were my coping mechanisms. Mom’s death was not the only thing I dealt with in these past eight years. Numerous struggles and a tremendous amount of adversity overtook my life tumultuously. As a result, my actions and reactions were destructive to the spiritual, academic, and social aspects of my life. At first I was thankful, then, at other times, I blamed, even hated, God. One day I would curse my mom for not being here, the next I was asking her to pray for me because I missed her dearly. It was totally irrational and unstable. I tried shutting down, not speaking, being alone; no one knew or understood anything anyway. That didn’t work out too well for me.
Years of this type of broken lifestyle caught up to me. Eventually, I started reacting to the simplest things in outrageously-emotional ways, without understanding why. From the moment I woke up, I knew the type of day it was going to be. When the days started off healthily, the slightest agitation, in passing, caused the world to collapse for me. Finally, it all began to make sense. It was like a lightbulb went off in my mind. I had not fully dealt with mom’s passing, and it dictated every interaction and event that took place in my life ever since.
Healing After Loss, a book I purchased that same day, shed some light on another crisis hidden within me. The book consists of daily meditations for working through grief, with a slightly palpable Christian influence. Each of the meditations that I’ve read until now have had significant value, yet one stood out to me.
The first portion of the entry is a quote taken from C.S. Lewis:
“Something quite unexpected has happened. It came this morning early. For various reasons, not in themselves at all mysterious, my heart was lighter than it had been for many weeks…. And suddenly, at the very moment when, so far, I mourned H. least, I remembered her best. Indeed it was something (almost) better than memory; an instantaneous, unanswerable impression. To say it was like a meeting would be going too far. Yet there was that in it which tempts one to use those words. It was as though the lifting of the sorrow removed a barrier.”
The entry continues on to interpret and expound on this idea.
Perhaps the relinquishing of our most intense grief makes a space into which a new relationship with the loved one can move. It is the person, after all, whom we want, not the grief.
In these past years, a harsh relationship developed between my mother and I, slowly but surely replacing the loving one that existed while she was here. This one was convoluted and confusing, to say the least, with many barriers halting an actual connection with her, as is expressed by our mutual membership in the Body of Christ. I dreaded that. Many times I sincerely felt that she was the cause for everything happening in my life, so that the mere mention of her name brought about much frustration. This entry hit me like a ton of bricks. Rather than holding on to my mom and receiving the wonderful blessings present in having a loved one before our Lord, I’d held on to, and in fact added to, the misery and the grief that was ruining my life.
May I hold my grief lightly in my hand so it can lift away from me. My connection to the one I have lost is inviolate; it cannot be broken.
– Hickman, Martha W.. Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations For Working Through Grief (Kindle Locations 372-376). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Letting go is terrifying. You fear even further loss of the person whom you irretrievably desire. You want to keep them in your life by any means necessary, in whatever way you know how. The more you try, the more difficult it gets, until you force yourself to stop fueling the grief.
I was traveling to visit some friends one weekend this past January. Somehow we began discussing the balance between knowledge and pastoral care, and how to bridge the gap between knowing the truth academically, while ministering to Christ and His children in the Spirit, not by the letter (cf. 2 Cor. 3:4-6). As we each recounted experiences that affected us, and those to whom we have been disciples, the first person I remembered was my mother. In all the years since she had passed, this was the first time these memories came up. I recalled Sunday afternoons after church, and how she would take out her notebook and call every one of her Sunday School children, whether they were present that day or absent. I remembered that she was sensitive and responsive to the needs of those around her. She gave her time and her ear to many who needed someone to listen.
One particular memory vividly recurred to me. Mom had come home from work after having had a conflict involving mistreatment by her boss. My father wanted her to take action and defend herself. She disagreed: “If I treat them the same way they treat me, they won’t learn, but when I treat them with love, they will realize the difference.” Whether in her health or in her sickness, she never ceased doing what she could for others.
There I was, sitting at the table with my friends, and it dawned on me that I’d been holding on to the wrong end of my life’s reality this whole time. Mom isn’t here physically, but there’s so much of her that is still here. In me. In my brother. Yes, it sounds like a line from a Disney movie, but it’s completely true. My brother and I have the same loud voice, the same tendency to sing constantly (just ask my friends!), and the same innate mannerisms. I got a little bit of her cooking skills, if and when I really try! I even have the same random severe allergies, which apparently went away while she was pregnant with me. To my brother’s delight, he got the colored eyes and the lighter complexion from her side of the family. Nothing I can do about that, unfortunately.
Watching the priceless home videos we have, I hear her laugh and compare it to my own; she used to light up the room. She could never stop laughing. Even as I write this, I remember how many times she asked us to stop making her laugh while she was ill, because it hurt and she couldn’t stop laughing no matter how hard she tried.
I aspire to share with those I encounter the loving spirit she shared with everyone she encountered. She never assumed anything negative about anyone; she saw something good even in the people that hurt her, and she served them regardless of the expense, whether medical, financial, or otherwise.
All of this came rushing back to me for the first time since she passed away: all the pleasant memories, the ones I’ve hidden in me for what seemed to be eternity. Why not choose to live by the heart-warming memories, rather than the painful ones? Do you want to be made well?
It is impossible to not mourn her absence. It is impossible not to be inspired by her presence. That’s exactly what I now choose to do. Her memorial shouldn’t be a season of anguish, as it has been many a time. Mother’s day doesn’t have to be so grim, holidays don’t have to be empty, pain doesn’t have to win. Last year, family and friends gathered to celebrate mom’s memorial. We prayed liturgy together and then returned to my house. I looked around and saw images of her surrounding us, then took notice of all those present with us that day. There was not one person in the room that had ever met mom, not even once. I was overwhelmed with emotion. So many people came to share the most difficult of times with us, without ever knowing the person whom they were commemorating. Astoundingly, they did this every year, dedicating their time and their hearts to us! Recently, one of the reverend fathers texted me asking about my mother, saying that he’d been thinking of my mom a lot recently and wanted to know more about her because he had never met her. The words of David the prophet stand true: “For he shall not be moved for ever; the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance” (Ps. 112:6).
It isn’t of our own merit that these people come to be with us. It is a result of the way she lived, the way she raised us, and the lives that she’s touched, whether it be through her own deeds or through us. Her love has lasted. If you take comfort from the Holy Spirit and you allow Him to work in you, He will give you the power to make that change and overcome this world. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7). The question is: “Do you want to be made well?”
Words would not suffice to describe the relationship my mother and father had. Amidst all the agony of her diagnosis and treatment, their love only grew more fervent. She loved him, trusted him, cared for him, stood by him, and supported every dream and aspiration he had. Any adversity that occurred outside of our home remained outside of our home. She thanked God and continued to serve her family in joy, without complaining. How long will we carry wounds, which we’ve left untended, into our closest relationships? Ask Christ to give you a new heart, one of flesh and not of stone (cf. Ezek. 36:26), so that you are once again able to love others without causing them the undeserved anguish that arises from your untended wounds. Do you want to be made well?
Mom,
You are a piece of me and always will be.
Living in me, part of my entity.
I carry you by me, and you live through me.
All that I am, all that I will be
is because of thee.
Dandoona
I have pain. I’m weak. I mourn. I cry. I battle despair. I’ve rejected comfort many times. Thankfully, it’s not about me.
IT’S ABOUT HIM.
“He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds” (Ps. 147:3)
It isn’t about what you’re feeling, or how far away you’ve gone, or what you’re hiding, or what breaks inside of you. He already knows your heart, your anger, your pain, your struggle, your weakness, and everything in between, because He became man like us. This is Orthodox teaching: “He took what is ours and gave us what is His” (Friday Tadakia). He took upon Himself everything that you live through. Just as you weep, He wept (John 11:35). If you feel anxious, remember that He bled due to anxiety (Luke 22:44). If you mourn, recall that His soul was grieved unto death (Matt. 26:38). That’s only half of the story. Now, we need to take what is His. We need to receive His healing, His comfort, His strength and be resurrected with Him. “For in the place where sin has abounded, the grace of Christ has abounded more” (Monday Tadakia; cf. Rom. 5:20). This is the message of salvation: He came to restore man once again. Let us trust in His promises, take from His goodness, be filled with His holiness and be restored through the blood of His sacrifice and His resurrection from the dead.
Finally, I leave you with these remarks. Those of you whom I’ve wronged in these past years, I ask your forgiveness and understanding. Pray that I learn to take healing from the Lord’s gracious hands. Beloved friends and family, I can’t express the thanks I have in my heart to God for your presence in my life. You give me strength when I have none. I love you all, so dearly.
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