Lessons from MS: Dying and Rising

Since my MS diagnosis, I’ve encountered quite a few new challenges. Some are easy for others to see and understand, like pain, numbness, and imbalance. My reflexes aren’t what they used to be either - which hurts my pride quite a bit. I was shocked to find how much of my ego is wrapped up in my ability to easily (and sometimes artfully) catch a casually tossed clementine. But perhaps the most difficult part of MS for me so far is less obvious to others. I have been deeply affected by the uncertainty that comes with waking up each morning. Will I be able to feel my feet? My legs? My hands? Will my vision snap into focus after I open my eyes, or will it stay blurry? Will my first step out of bed lead to a second, or were the previous night’s steps from the bathroom to bed my last? Questions like these are ever-present and the weight of the uncertainty is a difficult load to carry.

I’ve also learned that both my actions and external factors can influence the symptoms of MS significantly. Daily exercise appears to have some positive effects, while heat seems to be a particularly sticky wicket for me. I am the least confident on my feet when I’m warmest which makes achieving the benefits of exercise difficult and quite frankly a little dangerous. In fact, my lowest points occur during and immediately following exercise - the dizziness, pain, and numbness are often intense. But I like how my body feels later in the day when I exercise. The pain subsides, my balance improves, and some days I might even catch a damn clementine.

And so each morning I face a choice. Do I go for a long walk knowing that I will be plunging myself into the depths of some unsettling MS symptoms with the hope that I’ll emerge anew... or not? Do I face my brokenness, move deeper into it even, in hope that I will arise more like the person I want to be?

Most mornings this summer, I put on my shoes and walk down my front steps knowing that I’ll need both handrails to get back up when I return. I trust what the doctors have told me and I trust my own experience, day after day, morning after morning. I hate the way that being warm makes me feel, but continue to hope that the intentional movement towards my brokenness will lead to renewal and life more like the one I desire. It’s work. It’s hard, messy work and it requires a head-on, face-to-face acknowledgment of my condition and my reality.

Over the last few weeks, the messy work of this hopeful movement deeper into my physical brokenness has struck a chord within me because of how much it reminds me of a life of faith. In the Jesus tradition, this language of dying and rising is everywhere. God’s work in the world can be seen entirely through the lens of Jesus’ own death and resurrection, and all of God’s creation is invited to join with Jesus in both the dying and the rising. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that to follow him one must lose their life. In the book of Romans, Paul said that just like Christ himself, we too will be raised to walk in the newness of life after being joined to Jesus in his own death. The rite of Baptism itself is a death and rebirth in the water joined with the Word of God.

For so much of my life, I allowed a small, narrow, future-focused interpretation of this radical call and promise to inform my faith. The dying was simply a future, physical, inevitably and God’s radical promise applied only for what came after this life. I needed only to pin my hopes, my faith, and my perspectives on what I knew to be true, and then I could rest easy, knowing that when the time comes, God’s promise would be out there waiting for me. I was just like so many American Christians who after they encounter Jesus, climb a hill, plant a flag, and begin a life of faith defending their initial newfound perspective with absolute certainty. Like so many others, I believed that I died just once to what I was before - my “pre-Christian” life. But then I’m done. Saved. I accepted the promise of a future resurrection, and so I’ll be damned if I’m not right here, in the same place, exactly where I need to be when the time comes and God’s promise of rebirth finally arrives.

But as I’ve grown, matured, and well… lived a life of joy, pain, and grief, God has called me away from that narrow interpretation toward something more. My faith doesn’t just mean that I trust in something God will do, but in what God has done, and continues to do, daily. God is still creating and is constantly calling me forward into something new. The promise of new life in the cycle of dying and rising is always accessible, always new. God has promised me new life daily, and God’s own presence as comfort and support in the daily dying. And so faith is not stringent adherence to a single transformation or any single perspective. Faith is trusting that the new life God promises daily is worth the risk that my flag might be planted on the wrong hill, no matter how certain I am that it is a holy place. Faith is trusting that God doesn’t need my defense or protection. Faith is a willingness to set aside my current perspective daily and be transformed. Faith is trusting that a “slippery slope” down my hill of certainty is not a bad thing because God has promised new life and transformation. Faith is trusting that where the Spirit leads is always closer to God than where I am now.

In The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said:

“As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. Come and die.

When Jesus taught about the present reality of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth he often used parables that began with the phrase “You have heard it said…. but I say…” Using this structure, Jesus acknowledged existing worldviews, laws, and practices but called his followers forward to something more - a new understanding of God. And there is such wisdom and beauty in the parables. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. ’But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” (Mat. 5:43-44) This call, among many others, is still as relevant for us today as it was in the First Century. But while each parable teaches a different lesson, the structure of the parables is the same. The common, repeated element in Jesus’ message is a calling forward into something new. “You have heard it said… but I say…” We have centered the specific lessons because they’re radical, dramatic, demonstrations of God’s love for the world, but perhaps we’ve too often ignored the transformative call forward that is repeated in each and every story. We’ve planted a flag in the lessons as things to defend, rather than allowing God to continue to bring new life out of that which we already know. Faith is not trusting in what we have heard but in Christ himself.

God isn’t calling me to dig in my heels and defend the hill where I planted a flag long ago. God calls me down off the hill to come and die. God calls me to lace up my shoes each morning, and head out knowing that when I get back I might need help up the stairs. I might need a plastic non-slip mat in the shower. I might need a wheelchair. But God promises new life on the other side. God promises that in the letting go, in the dying, God will make all things new.

And so may the Jesus tradition be known for daily lacing up and letting go rather than a single stagnant perspective. May we be known for the journey and the cycle, dying to ourselves and our own certainty and being reborn in the Spirit’s movement wherever it may be. And may we be known for encouraging one another along the journey of dying and rising rather than yelling from our holy hills.