In the six weeks since my Dad’s brain injury,1 I've become keenly aware of and even awestruck (despite myself) by the way God gives Himself to us through both other people and institutions. I've been particularly surprised and moved by how effectively He does this within the milieu of sinful humans and flawed institutions. Getting in touch with this reality has been so unlikely for me that I can only attribute it to divine grace and revelation.
(Image source: https://pixabay.com/users/susanne906-7541483/)
After my dad fell on the front walkway leading to my parents' house, he was unable to get up on his own or with my mom’s help. One of the neighbors across the street from them saw what happened. He immediately ran next door to get a mutual neighbor, and both of them rushed over to help. Together they lifted my dad off the ground and carried him into the house. Then they helped my mom call 911. The paramedics arrived within minutes. After my dad was loaded into the ambulance and my mom with him, one of the neighbors drove his own car to the emergency center and stayed with my mom until my brother arrived. My mom no longer drives, and she’s also mildly disabled, so I was incredibly grateful for the way this neighbor went the extra mile for her on his own initiative.
It’s been 16 years since I worked in a hospital as a physician assistant--practically a lifetime ago. It’s hard to believe because it was once such a defining part of my existence. But the extended time away from health care has enabled some of the sharp edges that I developed during my time in the American health care system to soften. When my mom got critically ill in 2014 and spent weeks on a ventilator in a long-term acute-care hospital, I had only been away from health care for seven years. So, most of the things that captured my attention were the myriad problems I recognized—problems with institutional culture, practitioner burnout, standard but nonsensical practices, etc. While I appreciated individual care givers and that the level of care my mom needed was available to her, I felt a general distrust toward the entire system. Thus, my posture toward it was one of constant and critical vigilance.
The problems within the American health care system haven’t gone away. They’re as pronounced as ever, maybe even worse than they were a decade ago. But I’m also nine years older now, and my body has been through a lot since then, rendering it far more sensitive to fatigue and environmental stress. I simply can’t do overnight vigils in the hospital anymore or practice my previous level of vigilance. I've had to find a very different way to be this time.
That way to be, I've discovered, is the way of surrender.
Surrender
In the world, the word surrender tends to be associated with defeat and passivity. The biblical picture of surrender, however, is quite different. It's active and produces confidence rather than defeat. Christian surrender involves a transformation in posture from one of tight-fisted control to one of actively abiding in Christ (John 15)—not because it’s the “right thing to do” but because the posture of abiding is the one that most reflects and respects reality. Our human limitations exist within the context of divine expansiveness.
Of course, such a posture is achievable only if I actually believe that Jesus is present and involved in the nitty-gritty details of hospital life—details like intravenous catheters, monitoring wires, IV pump alarms, shift changes, ill-fitting gowns, anti-skid socks, rotating hospitalists, green jello, wet-wipe baths, itchy scalps, bowel movements, and zinc oxide ointment. But my previous training and experience as a healthcare provider conditioned me to view the hospital setting primarily through the lens of competence. As a result, I tended to function like a deist there—someone who believed in a supreme God but didn’t believe He intervened in human affairs. It may not be what I believed in my head, but it was the unconscious belief that drove my emotional responses and led me operate as if it were up to me to catch and fix every problem or else [insert imagined disaster here].
This time around, I’m at least aware that the list of things I lack the ability to do is far, far longer than the list of things I actually have the ability to do. I think it has a lot to do with what I experienced during the grueling six years between 2015-2021 that my husband and I spent walking alongside, navigating social systems with, and attempting to rehabilitate two friends who struggled chronically with housing insecurity and who had both spent some time living on the streets. That whole experience was real hubris killer. It was painful and unpleasant but refining. My pride bubbled to the surface in the form of temper tantrums, anxiety attacks, depression, sleepless nights, crying fits, a bad attitude, and physical ailments… and the Holy Spirit skimmed the scum off the surface.2
I still have a long way to go, but in general, l’ve become much more aware and accepting of the limits of my power and presence. I don’t fancy myself to be the change agent in other people’s lives to the degree that I once did. I don’t mean this in a nihilistic sense, more as a creature who has gotten much more in touch with her creatureliness and with what’s required in order for us to bear the burden of other people’s freedom (see Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer). Psalm 131 tells me that King David must have arrived at a similar point:
O Lord, my heart is not proud,
nor do I have a haughty look.
I do not have great aspirations,
or concern myself with things that are beyond me.
Indeed, I have calmed and quieted myself
like a weaned child with its mother
I am content like a young child.
Acceptance of our creaturely limitations is a prerequisite to developing a posture of surrender before God. It’s the step we take when we recognize that He is omnipresent and we are not, that He is omnipotent and we are not, and that He is far wiser than we can ever hope to be.
Surrender Amid Stormy Waters
This is easier said than done, of course. We want things, and we want to have them our way. I’m not even talking about extravagant things like houses, cars, status, fame, or exotic vacations. I mean that we want our loved ones (and ourselves) to be healed of their diseases, treated well, delivered from evil, and protected from harm. Always. But in a fallen world with imperfect people and flawed institutions, a lot of things can and do prevent us from getting what we want.
My dad has been in a skilled nursing facility for a little over a month now as he recovers from his very serious brain injury, and there have been numerous issues: miscommunications with the staff, a urinary tract injury due to a non-secured bladder catheter, misplaced items, multiple slips out of bed onto the floor as my dad has regained motor function, a medication error serious enough to prompt an ambulance ride to the hospital emergency room to receive treatment, and a dishonest nurse that caused our family a full day of misery. I’ve had to be in communication with the medical director, the nurses, the aides, the therapists, and the executive administrator at different points to address each of these problems as they’ve happened. Nevertheless, something in me has shifted. In the past, I would have treated all these incidents as proof that I had to be present all time or as close to all the time as possible. And while I can't say I'm not occasionally tempted to revert back to that mentality, it’s simply obvious to me now that it's an inappropriate one for a non-omnipresent, non-omniscient, non-omnipotent being to have.
Now, instead, when there is a concern that I can and must address, I see it as work that God has for me to do that day. I try my best to do that work with love and as faithfully as I can. I’ve come to accept the fact that whether I spend two hours or eight at the skilled nursing facility with my dad, whether I spend a week at a time in Houston or two, it’s inevitable that I must leave his side (and my mom’s) and entrust his (and my mom’s) care to others, and ultimately, to God. I’ve found the practice of entrusting my dad to the Lord to be similar to the practice of entrusting myself to God when I go to sleep. When I sleep, I am utterly vulnerable. I depend on God to watch over me. Being away from the people I love, knowing that they are so incredibly vulnerable, evokes feelings of vulnerability too. I must entrust their well-being to others, whether angels or humans. The Night Prayer, or Compline, in The Book of Common Prayer, is a prayer I’ve returned to over and over since I read Tish Harrison Warren’s Prayer in the Night.3 It contains elements of worship, thanksgiving, penitence, intercession, and petition. Some excerpts:4
Most merciful God, we confess to you, before the whole company of heaven and one another, that we have sinned in thought, word and deed and in what we have failed to do. Forgive us our sins, heal us by your Spirit and raise us to new life in Christ. Amen.
O Lord, make haste to help us.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning is now and shall be for ever. Amen.
Alleluia.
Save us, O Lord, while waking, and guard us while sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep may rest in peace.
Visit this place, O Lord, we pray, and drive far from it the snares of the enemy; may your holy angels dwell with us and guard us in peace, and may your blessing be always upon us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
But the prayer I’ve come to pray the most is, surprisingly, not this one or my list of supplications but, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It helps me stay centered on the fact that: 1) Jesus is indeed Lord over all, even big messes, and 2) my greatest need is not for God to fulfill the things on my list of concerns but for Him to have mercy on me. As a sinner, I’m prone to sinning against God, against people, and even against myself when things don’t go the way I think they should. I’m tempted to be demanding, judgmental, prideful, anxious, and wrathful. I need His mercy in order to respond rightly and to see His hand at work amid the problems.
Divine Easter Eggs
The most significant thing I’ve discovered during this time is that I can see so much more of God’s mercy, kindness, and provision when I’m not judging people or even institutions. I don’t deny that people and institutions sometimes deserve to be judged, even condemned. But I myself am too frail, too flawed, too much of a sinner to take on the weight and posture of judgment without it forming me in spiritually destructive ways. When I assume, on my own initiative, the role of judge/arbiter/fixer—even in the name of Jesus or His kingdom—I don’t become more righteous. I fall into the vice of pride and develop a permanently bent, adversarial stance toward those I judge. I reduce them to objects for me to influence in order to get what I want. When I get bent like that, I stop giving thanks to God in all things. I become unable to see people through His eyes. I become vulnerable to deception. That prevents me not only from seeing what God is doing but also from receiving the abundance of good things He is giving all around me all the time, even in the darkest places.
One of the most powerful examples of this is found in the story of Barracks 28 from Corrie Ten Boom’s book, The Hiding Place (1971), which documents Corrie’s and her sister’s (Betsie) incarceration at the Ravensbrück concentration camp during World War II. Go to the footnote to read the full excerpt.5 Talk about a divine Easter egg!
I don’t have anything anywhere near that exciting to share, but there have been so many moments in the past few weeks in which I’ve encountered the goodness, mercy, wisdom, provision, and grace of God. I’ve found it in the therapists working with my dad, the housekeeping staff who keep his room clean, the aides who clean his body and change his diapers, the nurse who FaceTimed both my brother and me from her personal cell phone on a day when he was particularly confused, and the administrator who has been highly responsive to our concerns. I’ve also recognized the reality of God’s mercy in numerous moments with both my mom and my dad. What struck me most was the realization that it’s been there all along, even if I haven’t had the eyes to see it until now.
I’m realizing something else as well. If I can now see the presence, power, goodness, and mercy of God operating, unhindered, within a corrupt health care system and within my tragically broken family system; if the ten Boom sisters were able to see the goodness of God operating, unhindered, within the oppressive environment of a Nazi concentration camp, then I can surely hope that one day I’ll be able to taste and see the goodness of God operating, unhindered, within deeply flawed religious institutions as well.
Image source: http://www.livingalifeincolour.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/meimanrensheng.com-meat-broth-4-skim-the-scum.jpg
https://tishharrisonwarren.com/prayer-in-the-night
https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/daily-prayer/night-prayer-compline
Barracks 28
We lay back, struggling against the nausea that swept over us from the reeking straw.
..Suddenly I sat up, striking my head on the cross-slats above. Something had pinched my leg.
“Fleas!”I cried. “Betsie, the place is swarming with them!”
“Here! And hear another one!” I wailed. “Betsie, how can we live in such a place!”
“Show us. Show us how.” It was said so matter of factly it took me a second to realize she was praying. More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie.
“Corrie!” she said excitedly. “He’s given us the answer! Before we asked, as He always does! In the Bible this morning. Where was it? Read that part again!”
I glanced down the long dim aisle to make sure no guard was in sight, then drew the Bible from its pouch. “It was in First Thessalonians,” I said. We were on our third complete reading of the New Testament since leaving Scheveningen.
In the feeble light I turned the pages. “Here it is: ‘Comfort the frightened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all…’”
It seemed written expressly to Ravensbruck.
“Go on,” said Betsie. “That wasn’t all.”
“Oh yes… ‘Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.’”
“That’s it, Corrie! That’s His answer. ‘Give thanks in all circumstances!’ That’s what we can do. We can start right now to thank God for every single thing about this new barracks!” I stared at her; then around me at the dark, foul-aired room.
“Such as?” I said.
“Such as being assigned here together.”
I bit my lip. “Oh yes, Lord Jesus!”
“Such as what you’re holding in your hands.” I looked down at the Bible.
“Yes! Thank You, dear Lord, that there was no inspection when we entered here! Thank You for all these women, here in this room, who will meet You in these pages.”
“Yes,” said Betsie, “Thank You for the very crowding here. Since we’re packed so close, that many more will hear!”
She looked at me expectantly. “Corrie!” she prodded.
“Oh, all right. Thank You for the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed suffocating crowds.”
“Thank You,” Betsie went on serenely, “for the fleas and for—”
The fleas! This was too much. “Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.”
“‘Give thanks in all circumstances,’ she quoted. It doesn’t say, ‘in pleasant circumstances.’ Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.”
And so we stood between tiers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.
Back at the barracks we formed yet another line–would there never be an end to columns and waits?–to receive our ladle of turnip soup in the center room. Then, as quickly as we could for the press of people, Betsie and I made our way to the rear of the dormitory room where we held our worship “service.” Around our own platform area there was not enough light to read the Bible, but back here a small light bulb cast a wan yellow circle on the wall, and here an ever larger group of women gathered. They were services like no others, these times in Barracks 28.
At first Betsie and I called these meetings with great timidity. But as night after night went by and no guard ever came near us, we grew bolder. So many now wanted to join us that we held a second service after evening roll call.
There on the Lagerstrasse we were under rigid surveillance, guards in their warm wool capes marching constantly up and down. It was the same in the center room of the barracks: half a dozen guards or camp police always present. Yet in the large dormitory room there was almost no supervision at all. We did not understand it.
One evening I got back to the barracks late from a wood-gathering foray outside the walls. A light snow lay on the ground and it was hard to find the sticks and twigs with which a small stove was kept going in each room. Betsie was waiting for me, as always, so that we could wait through the food line together. Her eyes were twinkling.
“You’re looking extraordinarily pleased with yourself,” I told her.
“You know, we’ve never understood why we had so much freedom in the big room,” she said. “Well–I’ve found out.”
“That afternoon, she said, there’d been confusion in her knitting group about sock sizes and they’d asked the supervisor to come and settle it. But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t step through the door and neither would the guards. And you know why?”
Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice: “Because of the fleas! That’s what she said, ‘That place is crawling with fleas!’”
My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie’s bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.
Wonderful post Judy. So many resonant points...this reminder is a blessing as I walk with my elderly parents. Thank you. Prayers for your father and family.
This is beautiful, Judy. So much of it parallels my own experience with my dad. Limited agency...that was one of the many lesson I learned. Thank you for putting such eloquent and vulnerable words around it.