This time of year holds many painful memories but also the promise of joy to come. It’s fitting that we are in the season of Lent, a time where I can sit with my thoughts and struggle with the goodness of God in the midst of darkness and pain. Here’s where I get honest. I struggle with the call on my life as a caregiver. I watch friends around me who, though exhausted, handle the caregiver task with self-sacrificing grace. At heart, I am a selfish human being and want the world around me to fall into a perfectly synchronized pulse. But life is messy, and falling in love with other living breathing souls adds unpredictable heartbreak.
When healing does not come to those we love, we are left with broken hearts and immense grief. When healing does come, our fragile hearts struggle with survivor’s guilt. We are left with the difficult task of finding purpose and joy with our scars.
You Can Not Leave Unchanged
As I read through the scriptures and Jesus’s interaction with those who ask for his healing touch on their own life, or on the life of a loved one, it’s as if I hear him saying:
Are you sure?
Are you ready for this?
Your life will never be the same.
One cannot enter the presence of Christ, be touched by his healing power, and walk away unchanged.
Healing does not always come with a fairy tale ending. In the time of Christ, those who were crippled and blind made their living begging. Healing took away the income they knew. The blind has to learn how to see. The lame has to learn how to walk. All who find healing find a new normal. Often the one who was healed, the one who survived, is left with the question, “why me and why not my friend instead?”
Life is messy.
But What Of The Caregiver?
What does scripture have to say about the one whose life revolves around the desire of healing for a broken child, spouse, or parent? The caregiver who day and night worries, loves and cares for the one entrusted to his/her care prays earnestly to a God who often seems distant or un-able-willing-interested in healing.
Is there hope for the caregiver in a community that often pushes them and their loved one out of site?
The Caregiver Who Approached Christ
In Matthew 15:21-28 a Canaanite woman, a desperate caregiver of a sick child, crossed gender and racial barriers to beg Christ to heal her daughter.
The text is harsh as Jesus first responds to her plea with silence.
Have you been there? Begging God for a healing touch in your own life or that of a loved one only to be met with deafening silence? I have. It’s not a pretty place to sit. In that space, there is helplessness and desperation. It feels draining and lonely.
The crowd pressed around this out-of-place woman. She was desperately alone. The disciples saw her as only a nuisance. They did not seek to speak up on her behalf but rather wanted Christ to rid them of the uncomfortable atmosphere her pain and presence brought them.
I find myself asking, is this us as the church? Does the pain of outsiders, the cultural crimes of crossing racial and gender barriers and of drawing attention to our most vulnerable, make us so uneasy that instead of seeking God for answers we petition God to make the issues and people go away? (But that’s a post for another day.)
Jesus Speaks To The Caregiver But For The Disciples
When Jesus does answer the caregiver he is insulting. He speaks as the disciples have requested, refusing the blessings they felt were reserved only for Israel.The first words this desperate woman hears are a representation of the hearts and beliefs of Christ’s followers. Kenneth E. Bailey says of Christ’s response, “Jesus was voicing, and thereby exposing, deeply held prejudices buried in the minds of his disciples.” Jesus, always the teacher.
Following a tragedy, or in the midst of lifelong disability, how often have the internal buried prejudices of churchgoers bubbled to the surface with words like:
- If you only had enough faith.
- Let me pray for him, my prayers work.
- You must have sinned for this to happen.
- If you did it this way…
Our theology bubbles to the surface in the presence of pain and unfamiliarity. What you believe, not what you give lip service to, presents itself in your words and actions when you feel threatened or uncomfortable. The deeply held beliefs of grace or works, of health and wealth, of poverty, race, nationality, and God play out in the messiness of our lives.
When Jesus says to the caregiver my blessings are not for you, they are for my own people, he is demonstrating to the disciples what such a theology looks like. He is saying this child and her mother’s pain is the cost of withholding blessing to anyone outside of our nationality. Can you live with that pain knowing you are the reason it was withheld? Jesus is always the teacher.
A Side Note: My Journey Of Caregiving
I am struck by this story in the reminder that my life is not my own. As a Christian, I belong to a community of people. The events of my life are not just for my personal journey of faith. I do not live in isolation.
My pain and joy is shared by those around me.
And whenever one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or when one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. 1 Corinthians 12:26
When we choose as a community to send away those who make us uncomfortable we are not just robbing them, we are robbing the ENTIRE faith community of Christ’s healing touch. We are robbing ourselves!
The Caregiver’s Persistence
Perhaps the woman was stunned by Christ’s response, or perhaps, like so many of my friends who are the caregivers of children with special needs, she had grown a thick skin and was accustomed to such remarks. Her desire for her daughter’s well-being far outweighed the public humiliation of crossing both racial and gender barriers. Her desire far outweighed any insult that was sent her way.
In humility, this mother said to Christ, “I know you have the ability to change our lives, to heal my daughter, and that ultimately you alone can save us.” (my paraphrase)
The caregiver’s story is one of faith in God despite the pain that God’s followers may inflict. It is a reminder, to us, that Christ came for all. It is a reminder to remove our prejudices whether they be racial, gender, economic, national, political, etc…
Rejoice Together, Weep Together
We are all humans, created in the image of God. We all bear our own unique stories filled with joy and pain.
When we stop sending others away…
When we begin to acknowledge, hear and carry one another’s pain…
…then, just as the disciples experienced…
We will be recipients of the blessing of God’s healing hand.
The pain of the cross during the lent season is all of our pain. Likewise, the joy of the resurrection is joy for all.
Featured Image by Jake Thacker on Unsplash
