October
21, 2007
Her
name was Eliza. She was a tall and willowy and beautiful African American woman
in her early thirties when I met her. She had three children then—a boy 12, a
girl 10 and another girl 8. I never met their father, but I didn’t have to—they
all looked just like Eliza, from their coffee with cream colored skin, their
deep set brown eyes, their tall and angular bodies and their perpetual smiles.
When
I met Eliza she walked with an obviously painful limp and her fingers had lost
much of their flexibility. By the time I left her—five short years later—she
was confined to her bed and her body had started to curl back into itself. She
had developed Progressive Relapsing Multiple Sclerosis—the most rare form of
that debilitating disease, and the most difficult to treat.
The
first year or so of my time as Vicar of St. James in Charleston, West Virginia,
Eliza was able to drive and she and the children were in church every Sunday
that she didn’t have extreme weakness or pain that made it impossible for her
to drive. Gradually, she moved from a limp to a walker to a wheel chair and
finally, took to her bed. Her hospital bed was in the kitchen of their small
house so she could direct food preparation by her children.
Only
once did I ask about her husband and what she told me was this, “he left after
Tina was born and my MS was finally diagnosed. Tina was four or five by then,
but Charles could see what the future held. He read up on my disease and then
told me he had to leave. He just wasn’t ready to grow up the way his children
have.”
Then
she smiled from her bed and said, “who could blame him? I’m not bitter….”
And
she wasn’t, not at all, not a bit, not even a tiny bit. Eliza wasn’t bitter.
And
her children had ‘grown up’ faster than any child should have to mature. They
weren’t bitter either, though they could see what the future held for them.
Charles, Jr. and Maggie, the older two, were committed to do whatever was
necessary to care for their mother and stick around until Tina was old enough to
care for herself.
It
sounds like a tragic, awful story, doesn’t it? A beautiful, young woman cut
down in her prime; a marriage broken by pain and suffering; children having to
grow up too soon?
And
it wasn’t that at all, not at all.
In
fact, when I was down and out, when I was depressed, when I was feeling sorry
for myself—that’s when I’d visit Eliza and her children.
And
they would cheer me up.
“How
do you feel Eliza?” I’d ask.
She
would smile that 200-watt smile of hers and say, “Oh, places hurt I didn’t know
I had places…and everything is
alright…. If I could just get these babies to behave….”
Then
Charles, Jr. or Maggie or Tina would shake their heads and roll their
eyes—which ever of them heard her say it—and reply, unleashing a smile as bright
as Eliza’s, “oh, Mama, you’re the one who won’t behave….”
Oh,
don’t let me paint too pretty a picture about that little family. Life was hard
for the children and for Eliza. Money was tight and the duties those kids had
to serve their mother were demanding, odious, often heart-breaking. But when I
was with them—no matter how self-centered and distracted I was—they actually
cheered me up and sent me away a better person than the one who had knocked on
their door.
“I’m
just like Jacob,” Eliza once told me, “but my Angel wasn’t satisfied with
leaving me with just a limp….”
Eliza
read the Bible a lot and what she was referring to that day was the lesson we
heard from Genesis this morning.
Jacob
is running away from his brother Esau, who Jacob had betrayed, when he
encounters an Angel in the night and wrestles with that Angel until day-break.
Jacob demands a blessing from the Angel—which he gets in the end, along with a
new name—but the Angel also damaged Jacob’s hip so that he always, there after,
walked with a limp.
Encountering
God in the dark spots of our lives, in the midnights of our existence, CAN
result in being blessed and given a new name…but encountering God can also give
us a limp.
Someone—everyone
argues about who really said it—someone once said, “that which does not kill us
makes us stronger.”
Our
wounds, our pains, our sufferings do not ‘automatically’ make us stronger, but,
in God’s grace, they CAN.
That
is the gift to us from Jacob and from Eliza—by ‘our wounds’ we can be healed.
Our limps can make us walk with more determination, by God’s grace. Our
brokenness can, through the love of God, make us “whole”.
Life
is most often not consistently “kind”. Bad hips and limps and brokenness are
more often the norm of living. And there is this: IF CHRIST’S WOUNDS HEAL US,
SO CAN OUR OWN.
The
choice God leaves us is between “bitterness” and “wholeness”.
Jacob
and Eliza chose “wholeness” as they limped through life.
With
God’s help, that is the choice we can make.
So,
I invite you—I sincerely, profoundly invite you—to bring your wounds, your
brokenness, your limps to this Table today. Whether those pains are physical or
emotional or spiritual—bring them to this Table today.
There
is a balm in Gilead…there truly is—that much, because I knew Eliza, I can
promise you. Bring your pain and what may make you ‘bitter’ to the Table today.
And
chose “wholeness” to go with your limp.
