A Reflection On What It Is Like to Live in the Stream of God's Blessing (To Live as a Christian)

I don't count myself especially sentimental, and I don't like it when preachers or others let poignancy substitute for exegesis and application. Once in a while, though, you come across a story that hits you at your core. I love writing original content for this blog, but in doing a review I came across a particularly powerful story of gospel-driven character that I had to share with my readers: "Berry Mauve or Muted Wine" by T. Suzanne Eller.

Readers who take the five to ten minutes to read the whole thing will come away freshly encouraged to live self-sacrificially for those they love. As one reads, one marvels at the awesome power of the gospel, the message that has clearly shaped this husband's approach to his wife.

"He found me weeping bitterly in the hospital room.

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked, knowing that we both had reason to cry.

In the past forty-eight hours, I learned that I had a cancerous lump in my breast that had spread to my lymph nodes, and there was a possible spot on my brain. We were both thirty-two with three young children.

Richard pulled me tight and tried to comfort me. Our friends and family had been amazed at the peace that had overwhelmed us. Jesus was our Savior and comfort before I found out I had cancer, and he remained the same after my diagnosis. But it seemed to Richard that the terrifying reality of my situation had finally crashed in on me in the few moments he was out of the room.

As he held me tight, Richard tried to comfort me. “It’s all been too much, hasn’t it, Suz?” he said.

“That’s not it,” I cried and held up the hand mirror I had just found in the drawer. Richard looked puzzled.

“I didn’t know it would be like this,” I cried, as I stared in shock at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t recognize myself. I was horribly swollen. After the surgery, I had groaned as I lay asleep and well-meaning friends had freely pushed the self-dispensing medication to ease what they thought was pain. Unfortunately I was allergic to morphine and had swelled like a sausage. Betadine from the surgery stained my neck, shoulder and chest and it was too soon for a bath. A tube hung out of my side draining the fluid from the surgical site. My left shoulder and chest were wrapped tightly in gauze where I had lost a portion of my breast. My long, curly hair was matted into one big wad. More than one hundred people had come to see me over the past forty-eight hours, and they had all seen this brown-and-white, swollen, makeup-less, matted-haired, gray-gowned woman who used to be me.

Where had I gone?

Richard laid me back on the pillow and left the room. Within moments he came back, his arms laden with small bottles of shampoo and conditioner that he confiscated from the cart in the hall. He pulled pillows out of the closet and dragged a chair over to the sink. Unraveling my IV, he tucked the long tube from my side in his shirt pocket. Then he reached down, picked me up and carried me - IV stand and all - over to the chair. He sat me down gently on his lap, cradled my head in his arms over the sink and began to run warm water through my hair. He poured the bottles over my hair, washing and conditioning my long curls. He wrapped my hair in a towel and carried me, the tube, and the IV stand back over to the bed. He did this so gently that not one stitch was disturbed.

Next came the mascara, blush, and lipstick…

My husband, who had never blow-dried his hair in his life, took out a blow-dryer and dried my hair, the whole while entertaining me as he pretended to give beauty tips. He then proceeded, based on the experience of watching me for the past twelve years, to fix my hair. I laughed as he bit his lip, more serious than any beauty-school student. He bathed my shoulder and neck with a warm washcloth, careful to not disturb the area around the surgery, and rubbed lotion into my skin.

Then he opened my makeup bag and began to apply makeup. I will never forget our laughter as he tried to apply my mascara and blush. I opened my eyes wide and held my breath as he brushed the mascara on my lashes with shaking hands. He rubbed my cheeks with tissue to blend in the blush. With the last touch, he held up two lipsticks.

”Which one? Berry mauve or muted wine?” he asked. He applied the lipstick like an artist painting on a canvas and then held the little mirror in front of me.

I was human again. A little swollen, but I smelled clean, my hair hung softly over my

shoulders and I recognized myself.

“What do you think?” he asked. I began to cry again, this time because I was grateful.

“No, baby. You’ll mess up my makeup job,” he said and I burst into laughter.

During that difficult time in our lives, I was given only a 40 percent chance of survival over five years. That was sixteen years ago. I made it through those years with laughter, God’s comfort and the help of my wonderful husband. We will celebrate our nineteenth anniversary this year, and our children are now in their teens. Richard understood what must have seemed like vanity and silliness in the midst of tragedy.

Everything I had ever taken for granted had been shaken in those hours - the fact that I would watch my children grow, my health, my future. With one small act of kindness, Richard gave me normalcy.

I will always see that moment as one of the most loving gestures of our marriage." (From Danny Akin's God on Sex, 111-14)

On today, my twenty-seventh birthday, I am so thankful for those close to me who have loved me in self-sacrificial, gospel-driven ways. For my parents and the happy, healthy childhood they gave me, the regular sacrifices and uninterrupted love, I give thanks; for my wife, whose beautiful face is exceeded only by her beautiful character, I give thanks; for my Lord and Savior, who has saved me and is in the process of transforming me from a selfish, narcissistic, vain, disobedient, jealous, hell-bound man to a vessel fitted to praise Him, I give thanks. Though I can see great work to be done in my heart, I hope to glorify Jesus Christ by a life marked over and over again by expressions of love like that presented above, acts that capture in snapshot form, in momentary display, the great reality of Christ's cruciform love.

The Expectant Life: Or, a Theology of Waiting

I've been doing a good bit of thinking about this topic lately, as I've been thinking about the need to wait in my own life. Waiting is tough work. It touches every one of us in some way in every moment we live on earth. We might go so far as to say that waiting is our calling as Christians.

I will not be doing a biblical exposition of texts on waiting in the next few posts. That's not my style on this blog, though it certainly would be in a Sunday School class or even sermon series. We can quickly say, though, that waiting is a key part of the lives of biblical figures. We see this particularly in the Old Testament. Waiting is a part of Adam's pre-fall life. Waiting is therefore not necessarily a bad thing. Adam had to wait for a wife. He may not have known what he was missing, but it is clear that he was alone, and that there was not "a helper suitable for him." This would not have caused him to sin, obviously, but it would have appeared before him as a matter of trust, if indeed he himself did understand himself to be alone. Thus we see that waiting ought not to be seen automatically as a matter of deprivation. Instead, we ought to think of it as a matter of expectancy. When we wait, then, we ought not to concentrate on our lack, on our unfulfilled desire. We ought to focus on the hope that is before us. As Israel hoped for deliverance from God, as Hannah hoped for children, as Abraham hoped for a son, so ought we to hope. Many of the biblical figures, of course, did not wait perfectly. There were indeed many times when hope crossed into the dark land of despair. But this does not negate the central idea here, that waiting is not necessarily a bad thing, and that our waiting should be hopeful.

The term I used in the title is expectancy. Speaking representatively, I am not desperately unfulfilled in the present and waiting for my desires to be granted at some future hour. I am expectantly trusting in the Lord to reveal the fullness of His sovereign plan in time. When He desires to incorporate definitive action on my behalf into that plan, He will do so. Until then, He desires to incorporate definitive waiting on my part into His plan. In accepting this reality with gracious trust, I am walking in the old ways, treading the path carved out by the feet of so many believing Israelites. They waited centuries for a Messiah. They trusted that God would bring a deliverer, though He made no pre-appearances. The Lord taught Israel to trust, to wait expectantly, and to look for His coming.

How ironic that this is our lot as well, and that things really haven't changed all that much. We still await a Savior. We await the Messiah. We wait on His return. He is coming soon. In this, the ultimate desire of our life, we wait with patient faith, and so teach ourselves about all of life. We are to wait on guidance and restored health and church restoration in the same way that we wait on our Savior: trusting that the Lord's hand will move at the right time, knowing that it is not wrong or unkind of the Lord to leave us to wait. No, so far from this, it is in this season of waiting, this life of expectancy, that we are trained to understand God Himself. Though we wait, we do not despair. We have not strayed from our calling. We have found it.