Again?

"Okay, ready? One, two, three, and little stick.... Breathe. You're doing good."

Almost every lab technician says the same thing. I might as well say it along with them. I have the script memorized at this point.

It's been years since I've been in the hospital for my illness. I've been "free" from it and happily so for a nice while now. And yet now I'm wondering... Did I live fully into that "free" reality? Did I give it my all while I had a chance to do so?

Perhaps you wonder what has me thinking through this (admittedly) bleak thought. For several weeks now, I've experienced increasing amounts of pain in my neck where my illness was found those many years ago. I brought it up to my primary care doctor, who referred me on for a neck ultrasound. Upon receiving those results, I have been sent on for a consultation with an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor to do a biopsy.

There's a lymph node. It doesn't look right...

Now there's a little bruise that stays in the crook of my arm where the lab techs take their data from me. I've lost count. How many times have they stuck a needle into my arm? How many times have we counted to three... and breathe... you're doing good.

"What if" is my constant mental companion these days. What if I need more tests? What if those tests come back odd? What if it's.... ca... can.... I can't even bring myself to finish that one.

My therapist and I have been talking about acceptance. About reaching a point in which I am not fighting the realness my reality but working to do something proactive within that reality. I can barely wrap my mind around this concept. How to accept something that I don't know yet? What is this? Why am I in pain? What if it's canc.....

I'm angry. I try not to be, but I am. I have already gone through my struggle with my health. One big struggle in your twenties should be enough. You shouldn't have to do it a second time.

My anger comes from an intense belief that God is a God of wholeness. And this pain in my neck is anything but wholeness. It is the stark opposite, the dark contrast to the Light that I believe in. Why is this happening? If you are good, O God, and you love with a power that is mightier than many waters, then why?

I cry out in confusion and anger and heartache. I want to know. I want justice. I want the wholeness that I thought was mine. But it turns out that the wholeness I thought my body had achieved was fleeting. It has evaporated like the morning dew. With the dawning of realization, as each new test comes back and we learn something new, it melts away in my fingers. Glisten. Gleam. Gone.

I don't know anymore how to reconcile what I believe about God and what is a reality for my body. My therapist talks to me about radical acceptance. About learning to let this be. How defeatist, I think. And yet what else is there to do? I can't live in denial. Something is wrong. To claim otherwise would cause more pain in the long run.

And so, what now?

It's times like these, when the world doesn't seem to fit into the nice little mold that my theology constructs, that I look to Jesus. I've so often tried to believe that we as Christians are an Easter people. We live in the reality of life. And there's truth to that. I have to hold on to resurrection, for there is hope there. But I am coming to realize that at this phase of grief and loss and confusion, I can't look at Jesus resurrected and feel anything but an aching sort of longing. I so desire the reality of that hope in Jesus, and yet my body fights against itself, making my almost every action one that brings stabs of pain.

So I look to Jesus. But not to Jesus as he emerges triumphant from the tomb. I look to a bruised Jesus, as I see my own bruised arms. I look to a bloodied Jesus, and I watch my own blood fill test tubes. I look to the anguished face of Jesus, as my own face contorts as my internal anguish makes its way out. I look to the tears of Jesus, as my own tears form tracks down my cheeks. I look to the pain of Jesus, as my own pain multiplies.

I don't claim that this is a comforting image. It's one of heartbreak, I know. But, somehow, it has brought me that acceptance my therapist so often talks about. Because even as much as it is wrong, and even as much as it hurts, and even as much as it is excruciating on every level imaginable, when I look to Jesus, I see me. I see my own pain there... with him. And I'm convinced that as my eyes behold his pain, his eyes behold my pain too. My pain is not hidden from God. There is a co-seeing and co-recognition of the hurt that is present both bodily and emotionally.

So, yeah. It might be ca... can... cancer. Again. It might be something else. Who really knows at this point. All I know is that my pain has not gone unnoticed. And that I can accept.