Saturday, January 31, 2009

Woes of Weakness

Throughout school, I’ve always wondered what ‘difficulty’ actually looks like. 15.5 years of formal schooling later, the question persists. This is not to say in any way that the studies I’ve had thus far were any less taxing, challenging, or infuriating than my dismal high school sleeping schedule suggests. However, for me, the idea of difficulty has always been very binary: you either get it or you don’t. Perhaps internalizing Master Yoda’s wise words from an early age, physics problems in which I had poured countless hours in complete befuddlement didn’t seem quite so bad once the solution was apparent. Homer didn’t quite seem the transcendent, enlightened savant once his initial barricade of “winged words” was penetrated. Even courses in college that, at the time, were long, bloody, painful wars of attrition seemed almost elementary once the concepts were mastered (circuits come to mind). Furthermore, this suggests that the process of learning only seemed ‘difficult’ as long as I was failing, not understanding, not cutting it. For some strange reason, hindsight is always 'easy.' Where then does ‘difficulty’ live? Does she only take up residence in the present (gender assignment completely arbitrary I assure you)?

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says that, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (NIV). For me, the most curious part of this assertion is in the last line; Paul groups together weakness, insults, hardships, indicating that this is the cross we must bear. However, there arises a qualitative discrepancy that I can’t seem to reconcile.

Upon closer examination of this laundry list of struggles, it appears that insults, hardships, and persecutions are all external while both weaknesses and difficulties are deeply internal. For me, the two are worlds apart. While the external persecutions that we face in America are certainly insidious, subtle, and conniving, I certainly don’t fear for my physical safety when attending church. The focus of my dilemma however is on the internal. Weakness and difficulty often like to hold hands and play together. While weakness describes my inability to act/overcome/understand, difficulty perhaps then describes the nature of the need to perform the very same action. Paul himself describes this internal struggle he faces in Romans 7: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” What Paul wants to do is obviously very difficult and where he fails, instead doing what he hates doing, is where lies his weakness.

What then is weakness? What is difficulty? Is it only the storm of internal conflict that rages when I am struggling to do what I know is right and then abates once I make the right choice, then relegated as ‘easy’? Or does weakness depend on my continual failure? Do I understand my own weakness by how persistently I “have the desire to do what is good, but […] cannot carry it out”? If difficulty ends when understanding/action begins, does boasting “all the more gladly about my weaknesses” require my ongoing inability to perform? I know that when I overcome evil, it is not I, but Christ living in me who does it. But if this is true, where is my weakness?

Monday, January 19, 2009

bit of Eternity

This is from a friend of mine.

bit of Eternity

July 23, 2005

My paternal Grandma lost her sister about 15 years ago. She told me often how hard it was to let her go because they were so close. She told me once about a dream she had about Jodi and in this dream she could feel Jodi’s flesh and even smell her. She said that the dream was refreshing and brought her much comfort.

About a year after Nathan died I laid awake, finally fully aware in one instant that he was completely gone and that I was to for the rest of my life be lonesome for his touch. I wanted so badly to feel him and see him again.

I remembered my Grandma’s dream and begged God for the same small bit of relief. It was some months later that I woke up with tears soaking my face and the feeling of a deep something inside of me that I couldn’t place.

It was one of those dreams that sits right at the front of your brain all day and just on the tip of your tongue until finally, a word is spoken, an image is flashed and the memory of the dream comes flooding back. I was on the phone with Mom when she said something that triggered my memory.

I had dreamed that I saw Nathan. He was in a building that was under construction and he was wearing a suit and a hard hat. I knew somehow that he was in charge of the construction, like a real estate mogul or some sort. He didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t say anything to him, we just embraced.

I could feel every muscle in his arms and I could even hear the deep thudding of his heart. I started to weep, loudly. I cried with a loud, mournful and yet joyous wail that I could actually see reverberating off the walls of the building and then outside into the world. I saw the echo of my cry repel off canyons and skim the waters of the ocean. In one instant I saw the surface of the entire universe, and I saw it all get bathed in my grief and my joy.

When I woke up I had this sense calm and peace that had no tangible identity. It was as though I knew the truth, but I wasn’t sure what the truth was; a feeling of all at once wholeness and longing.

At the remembering of the dream, I realized the word for what I was feeling: Eternity.

That was the feeling deep in my gut that gave me that peace. For just an instant I felt Nathan, I smelled him and I felt the eternity in which he waits. Eternity is the only comfort the grieving have. It is the promise that death is only for a little while and grief knows an end.

I am not sure if any of this makes sense. I just really needed to write about this dream.