on this date

There are some dates that just stand out in our calendar year, aren’t there? For me, the anniversary of my mother’s passing (Oct. 25) captures my attention in a way few other dates do. It’s not the kind of day that requires a Google calendar recurring event in order to remember, like a brother-in-law’s birthday, or a 6-month reminder to change a furnace filter. I don’t need to be reminded - it’s always with me. What I do, think, watch, listen to, eat and drink on these special days is often both intentional and meaningful. December 18 will be one of these dates for me now - the day I found out I have Multiple Sclerosis.

To be fair, I’ve known this for a while. I mean, I haven’t actually known, but I’ve suspected. It’s been on my radar and within the range of possible outcomes for my life - well within two standard deviations of the mean. My mom had Parkinson’s. My dad has Alzheimer’s. This MS diagnosis is not so much bad luck as it is just my family hitting the autoimmune trifecta. And I’ll be the first to admit that in a horribly morbid version of “Would you rather?” I’ll take MS over the other two conditions six days a week and twice on Sunday. I watched my mom suffer from Parkinson’s. I mourn the loss of my pre-dementia father every single day, even though he’s still kicking. But now I’ve received my own diagnosis of an autoimmune disorder. It’s real, and it’s here. I won’t ever need a Google calendar reminder to recall the day I heard the words, “You have MS.”

It must have been a real shitty phone call for my doctor to make. I mean, I get it. I made quite a few “bad news” calls during my time as a hospital Chaplain this past summer, and it’s not a whole lot of fun. But when my doctor described the variance in the number of oligoclonal bands between my blood and cerebral fluid as “interesting,” I knew what was coming next. I knew it even though I didn’t understand it. And so I closed my eyes and held onto hope, if only just for a brief moment. I allowed myself to escape within a quick daydream in which the doctor shared a truly “interesting” diagnosis, not the one that I suspected. I imagined what he might say after examining Wolverine, or Spiderman, or the Hulk. “Isn’t that interesting?” he’d say, “You’re going to turn green, that’s for sure - and some patients with this particular condition may experience fits of rage accompanied by random smashing.” But unfortunately, my doctor didn’t actually mean interesting. He meant terrible. He just preferred not to say it that way. He chose not to get down into the pit with me and face the truth that I must - and I don’t blame him one bit. A pit is not a fun place to be.

But here’s the thing… I’m not angry. I was angry at God for a cool decade after my mom died from complications of Parkinson’s in 2002. I’m not shocked either. I did that after I discovered my dad’s dementia had progressed so suddenly and so rapidly that out of nowhere he forgot to pay all his bills for three months in 2017. I guess if I’m honest, I’m just sad. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want my family to have to do this.

But the timing of this diagnosis is notable. I’m currently a second-year seminarian, having left my semi-lucrative job and guaranteed health insurance last year. I won’t deny that there are some additional financial obstacles as a result of this significant life-change, but I’ve also been mentally, spiritually, and emotionally preparing myself over the last 18 months for just such a new reality. God has been preparing me. And I owe it to myself to explore how my theology bumps up against the reality of this experience. Otherwise, why am I even doing this? If I cannot articulate my own faith and theological understanding now, in the face of my own suffering, then when?

And so, while being a seminary student doesn’t mean I have all the answers (or any of them for that matter) it does mean that I’m surrounded by thoughtful, kind, brilliant, faithful people - people I desperately long to be like. These teachers and friends have encouraged me to find my own voice as I study the faith I love. One such person happened to teach my Hebrew Bible course last semester. She compared the way that God worked to love and bless God’s people in the messy stories of Jacob’s family to an elementary school band concert. Listening to young musicians can be pretty painful, but we end up cheering in the end. We cheer because it’s beautiful and wonderful despite the many discordant notes. In the book of Genesis, Jacob’s son Joseph, for example, was sold into slavery by his brothers and later languished in prison - but God worked through the consequences of bad luck and bad behavior to bring this broken family to Egypt where the Exodus story began and God’s covenant with God’s people was established. The promise of God’s love and faithfulness to all of God’s people is beautiful, compelling, and encouraging. We delight in the power and faithfulness of God, but because we know how the story ends, we often just brush past the details of personal suffering along the way. In scripture and in looking back at our own lives, we can see the long arc of God working out God’s love for God’s people. But we can’t always see past our own suffering at the time. And Joseph was no different. He had some low moments too, right? For example, how did he feel down in his pit - literally - after his brothers turned on him?

“So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the long robe with sleeves that he wore; and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.” (Genesis 37:23-24)

Clearly, a bad day for Joseph. Almost certainly one he remembered for the rest of his life. But why the detail about the waterless pit? One theory is that it further describes the uncomfortable position Joseph was in. He was betrayed by his family and there was nothing to soothe or comfort him, not even a drop of water to quench his thirst in the midst of his real emotional and physical suffering. That’s rough. And something tells me that in his pit - angry, shocked, sad, and thirsty, Joseph didn’t find a lot of comfort in the long arc of God’s faithfulness. And we’ve all been there. There are times in our lives when a meme declaring (in artistic cursive script of course) that “all things work for good” brings forth more anger, frustration, and sadness than comfort. In the midst of suffering, a focus on divine providence alone can feel like a minimization or denial of personal pain. And that’s so much of what we teach and learn as Christians, isn’t it? That comfort should be found solely through a firm belief in the long arc of God’s love - that if we can be strong enough, muscle through, and just believe that God uses our suffering for some future good, we’ll find comfort and be okay. That faith and hope are somehow measurable and are mere signs of personal achievement in the face of grief, tragedies, and loss. Hashtag pit strong, y’all.

But the beauty of the good news of Christ is that there is water, comfort, and abundant life even in the depths of sorrow and grief. We aren’t doing our suffering siblings any favors by telling them to just be strong and take solace in the future good that God will do with their pain. And so today, as I look up in fear and sadness from my own pit, I want to declare that Christian hope is more than simply faith in what God will do. I’m a 42-year-old father of two young boys and I find myself suddenly facing a new future with a progressive disorder that will profoundly change my life. There will be pain, suffering, and emotional challenges ahead - and I am actively grieving the loss of the person I thought I was. Yet I have hope. Hope, not in what is to come or in what God will do with this suffering, but in what God has already done in Jesus. The God who does indeed work good from suffering also became small and experienced pain, grief, sadness, and loss. The powerful God who redeemed the cosmos now chooses to get down into the pit with me and hold me while I cry.

Another brilliant friend shared a word of hope with me that has given me life in these recent days. He said:

“Hope is a way of life that sustains us as we grieve and mourn. Hope is the assurance of being embraced as our tears roll down. Hope is the Spirit dwelling in our midst.”

We will all grieve. We will all mourn. And in these times hope can be found in a God who gets right down into the pit with us. We need not be strong. We need not feel insufficient in grieving our own losses.

So much of my own growing theological understanding involves resting in the midst of dialectical tensions like law and gospel or Christ’s simultaneous full humanity and full divinity. Living into these tensions requires delicately balancing sometimes contrasting truths - emphasizing one without denying the other. My sense is that this type of balance is required in the face of grief and suffering too. We trust that God can orchestrate a beautiful symphony despite the honking horns and squeaking woodwinds of our present reality, but we should not expect or demand that such truths comfort us in our pits. Down here, fearing the future and without a drop of water to quench my thirst, I need sustaining hope, the ministry of presence, and the Spirit of God dwelling with me.

In Hinduism, the third eye of Shiva represents spiritual wisdom and is said to see beyond what is readily apparent. This third eye doesn’t change or deny what each of the two natural eyes sees on their own but instead reveals deeper wisdom and knowledge that isn’t visible through the lens of just one eye. In this way, the third perspective isn’t a compromise - it accepts the fullness of truth from each eye, holds them in tension, and transcends above humanity’s tendency to favor simple black and white answers. As I move into a time of deep uncertainty in my own life, I suspect that I would do well to lean into the wisdom of my own father’s Hindu tradition. Perhaps the Spirit of God can lift me above simplistic answers and help me live into the mystery and wonder of a God who both reigns in power and cries with me in pain. Perhaps here in my pit, God can both sustain me in my grief and prepare me for a life of loving others in their grief. Perhaps through a third eye perspective, I can trust in a God that brings both sustaining hope and enduring faith - the melody of a beautiful symphony and the comfort of a warm embrace.