To My People ... on pain

I come to you this morning with a slightly different tone. We have been discussing black lives and the black voice a fair amount the past few weeks, and rightly so. I realize that has not been comfortable for some of my readers. It hasn't really been comfortable for me. I promise I write not from a seat of arrival and power. I write as a passenger, observer, fellow learner and listener who has had a lot of repenting to do through the years and most certainly as of late. 

But this morning, I want to talk about us, my white brothers and sisters, about us, my fellow Asian-Americans, (sidenote: perhaps you may not have heard my argument for why I qualify as Chinese? Allow me to digress a bit. I birthed two partial Chinese children....from my own body....these children lived inside of me... their Asian blood mingled with mine. Chinese DNA tracing my veins. To me, that sounds pretty Asian-American, at least in part). 

I want to talk about OUR pain, and listen to it. I want to listen to what God says to us about how we are handling our pain. I'll start with what Facebook told me yesterday:

Actually, this isn't the original image that spurred this post, but I lost that image and can't find it again or remember it exactly, so we'll go with this one which has some truth to it. Or how about this one:

Oh, Oh, or this one!!

We walk around with our red, blonde, brunette (and Asian-black) haired-heads held high. Our sunglasses cover our black-and-blued-eyes. We don't cry. No one sees us cry. We fight through our pain, and we pat ourselves on the back for doing it well. That is what Jesus would want, after-all, am-I-right? We seem to think there is a badge of honor to be earned when we deny that we have bruises, deny that we are bleeding, deny that we have fallen, been tripped, or ran into doors as we staggered in the dark searching desperate for the light-switch. We can't seem to admit how frail we are, that we've been abused, sexually or physically or verbally, that our kids are diagnosed with different abilities and have to enter therapy, that we need therapy to survive. Somehow we think that if we don't go to a counselor, that means our problems magically remain at some level of not-that-bad, so we dig in our heels and stand our ground, daily drowning in a cistern we hew and flood with our accomplishments, degrees, work titles, promotions, savings accounts, summer homes, vacations, church positions, and extra-curricular achievements. The list is exhaustive to type much less balance. For most of us, we hide under the premise of marginal success. We are not overtly wealthy, so we don't have to examine that we are also conspicuously not generous. We are not particularly cruel to our friends when they suffer, so we do not have to confess that we have a hard time honoring the sufferings of those who are not like us or that we do not know. 

But maybe we should just stop. So I will lead by example. Deep breath...here we go.

How many of you know that I type these words through pain this morning and the past four months?? How many of you know that for the past four months and certainly as long as we have been in quarantine, I have actually been battling an infection in my fingers and feet. Probably you do not know this. Of course you don't know. I haven't seen you, and I certainly haven't put THIS as my full-disclosure facebook status. It is, I must say, a little embarrassing. Fungus friends. I have fungus, and an infection. There is that too. Megin, the OCD Queen of Clean somehow has a recurring fungal and staph infection in her fingernails and toes. Worry not- apparently it isn't contagious as no one in my family contracts it. And my mother didn't contract it when she visited. But the doctors can't get rid of it, and most days I wear at least two or three bandages and flip flops if I go out because I can't cover my feet for the pain. No creams can take care of it, that I can take while breast feeding at least. I continue to try different prescriptions as well as over-the-counter and ancient Chinese remedies, but the truth remains, my fingers and toes swell. The skin dries up. I have to lather on lotion, soak them, dry them, mend them, tend to them. And then, what's more, the finger nails get in-grown. They are inhibited from growing because of how my skin swells. One week, about a month or so ago, I spent a Sunday out of view of the camera while Jesse preached his sermon via zoom, tending to Eden, and cutting out ten ingrown fingernails, literally one from EACH finger. I used up all the expired pain medicine from my c-section and rough delivery with Eli. I've gone through a bottle of motrin. I have had about fifteen-eleven different tele-health appointments because heaven-forbid I actually GO to a doctor's office or hospital here in New York right now which would increase my chances of contracting COVID by about 99.99%. We have pretty much taken out stock in bacitracin, mupirocin, and bandaids (although we succumbed to rite-aid brand eventually). And nothing clears it up. I suffer... waiting...  

I work to keep my nails from getting ingrown in the overgrowth of skin by trimming them regularly, but I have to soak them in peroxide and wash my nail clippers in peroxide and hibiclens and betadine to prevent infection. That in turns dries out my skin more, thus I need more lotion and the moisture breeds more fungus. I have contracted staph four times since March. I have taken three oral antibiotics, changed my entire diet to consist of copious amounts of bone broth, vegetable broth, MCT oil, ghee, healthy fats, all of Jesse's vitamins and supplements, vegetables, and, as a kicker, cut out processed and refined sugars as much as possible (while still mainting the twice a month pizza habit & keeping the diet coke franchise out of chapter eleven). And do you know what happens, my friends, when you have to take powerful antibiotics to combat staph? Especially Methacillian-resistant staph? I'll tell you what happens. You develop....FUNGUS. Yup. That's right. It's cyclical. The entire freaking thing is cyclical. Basically, short of chopping off my hands and feet and putting on new ones, (or a hopefully more practical miracle from God for which I am praying and awaiting patiently), the cycle continues. Because the fungus creams destroy ALL the bacteria, good and bad, and you NEED the good bacteria to fight off the bad bacteria... and, well, I'm going to spare you all the medical explanations. That's not why you come to my blog, right? You come to read my awkward confessions TANGLED with TRUTH, so let's get to the TRUTH.

What is the point? Because certainly I am not telling you all this so that the time can be increased until I am allowed to see another person and speak with them at a distance closer than six-feet apart. The purpose is this: pain is purposeful. Pain is here for a reason. Pain is not meaningless. Suffering is not meaningless, whether it is nail fungus or the loss of a loved one, pain is not senseless. Pain is utilized in life to make us into something more than we were before we endured. I do not mean to imply that pain is enjoyable or that even in the original game-plan, pain was a part. Pain is awful and wretched, but it is reality in this world, as Jesus told us. As well, we can take heart. In this world we will have trouble, but HE has overcome the world, (John 16:33).

We can give cry to our pain. Voice it. Enter it. Embrace it. Even if it looks like it will wreck us and we could never come out the other side. Pain is a bully in that sense. It intimidates, but we are stronger than we realize. We literally can do all things through Christ who gives us strength. (You know- that Philippians verse your mom wrote in your senior yearbook). We can create a blog even while ten of our fingers are in bandages because they are sliced open and have bled over the sink for hours. We can endure. We can learn to taper our anger and words through the dreadful ache. We can figure out how to rise up through the throbbing and testify to something more than what we see or feel. It IS supernatural. It is NOT of ourselves. But God WILL meet us there with a transfiguration once we are willing to writhe with Him and let the tears fall. 

What is your pain? Will you let it give you pause, stop you in your tracks, and just turn your ear toward your Creator? I like to write as soon as I wake up in the morning, before the kids wake up and inevitably need a million snacks and literally (for one of them at least) to drink milk from my breasts. But this morning, because of pain, I had to sit, fingers soaking in a mixture of hot salt-water and peroxide, to draw out infection. And while the salt worked into the wounds, I was forced to LISTEN to God. And God spoke to my soul. Instead of typing and spewing out my thoughts, God enlarged me with His words. 

Psalm 82

God has taken his place in the divine council;

in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:

“How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;

maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.

Rescue the weak and the needy;

deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

They have neither knowledge nor understanding,

they walk about in darkness;

all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

I said, “You are gods,

sons of the Most High, all of you;

nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.”[a]

Arise, O God, judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations!

Ortland writes, "This Psalm goes way up high and then comes way down low....We are weak-spiritually. We have tasted what it is to be poor and destitute and needy. We were in sin's chains. But God sent his Son to break those chains....Having been delivered from the greatest bondage-spiritual bondage- we become delighted and privileged to care for those in a lesser but real bondage- a physical and material bondage," (The ESV Psalter).

I can write about social justice, my brothers and sisters, because I know what pain is. I have experienced pain from my childhood up, and I have grieved it, by God's grace, with the help and validation of others. And you know pain too. You have experienced it too. Have you grieved it? God cares. He wants you to cry out in pain. He WANTS you to ask for help. If you've asked for help before and been rejected, that is wrong. It was wrong. That is NOT just or just the way things are. Come to me. Speak to me. We will find you help. We will validate your cause. We will fight for your oppression. We will swiftly get you what you NEED. We will bandage your wounds. But please, don't continue on, scabs in place and infection festering below the surface. You are doing no good for yourself, and you are most certainly doing no good for the Kingdom of Heaven. You are right when you say we are all one race- the human race. Under God, we are united as His children. And He calls His children to be honest with themselves and with Him... to face reality, and their griefs. We can do that because He has born our griefs. You do have the time to deal with them. You just don't want to because it doesn't feel good, but until you stop, you will continue on heaping up for yourself more and more pain, more and more dirt, onto your face and your wound and your festering boil... and your fungus will cycle with the infection, and you will slowly but surely deteriorate....losing your life and saving none with whom you come into contact, black, white, yellow, red, or any color under the sun.

Be broken brothers and sisters, and listen, at the feet of Jesus, with your pain. 

Amen. 

(and pray for my fungus. Thanks)