Make Her Beautiful

We listen to a song often that was done by Hillary and Kate.

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new

It's such a lovely song, with such a simple truth.
And I think of the scripture that tells husbands
to love their wives as Christ loved the church:
how He gave Himself for her,
sanctifies her, 
and washes her with the water of the Word.
The church does not come perfect to the Savior's arms.

Sometimes I read Christian marriage advice and it's so cardboard.
I get especially annoyed by the advice to wives
that tells them how to be perfect.
To get perfect hair and exercise more and wear lipstick.

I'm a tomboy at heart, and not a trophy.
And I have never wanted to be a glossy beauty.
I wanted to be loved.
I wanted to be wanted.
But not wanted because I looked like someone else's idol.

When I met my husband, I was going out of my way to not be glossy.
Imagine this beauty, (which was a regular ensemble):
overall shorts and a t-shirt,
a braid pulled through a baseball cap pulled down low,
and thick socks with work boots.
I had some assets I could play up,
but I wasn't exactly in the frame of mind to catch anyone.
In fact, I was tired of being noticed physically.
It felt more like an insult than a compliment to be thought pretty. 

The first time I met him, I wasn't quite so off-putting in my dress
as described above.
I was wearing a hippy skirt with the work boots.
I guess in a small way, the skirt said 'feminine'.
We were praying in a group for a mutual friend
who was suffering from LSD flashbacks.
He openly stared at me through the prayer.
He didn't look away when I looked at him.

One day, a couple of weeks later,
I got off duty in the kitchen
when everyone else had eaten their dinner already,
and he sat down with me while I ate my dinner.
He asked me what I was going to do that evening.
"I thought I'd go up to the cafe and read poetry," I said. "What are you doing?"
"I thought I'd go up to the cafe and read poetry," he answered.
It was just plain -- I'm going to hang around you and be with you.
No pretending to run into me.
No begging to join me.

My husband makes me feel beautiful.
I am 32 and a half weeks pregnant.
I'm big.
And I'm older and tired.
My skin is drying out, and my lips have faded.
My hands are getting kind of papery.
My hair is frizzier than it used to be.
But he treats me like I'm beautiful.
It's my sixth child I am pregnant with.
He doesn't say things like,
"Have you thought about maybe getting a gym membership 
and getting back what you once had?"
Or, "Maybe you could get laser treatment 
for some of those scars that are marking you up now."
I cannot imagine that he does not see these flaws.
They are glaring realities to me.
But he doesn't seem to see these flaws --
even though he packed the wounds that left them for me.

I think I'd even rather have the scars that mar me
just to see how he looks at me like I am beautiful anyway.
The reality is that I am not more beautiful than I was
in my young, strong, healthy, unmarred body.
But weirdly, I feel more beautiful to him now than I did then.
I'm more confident in his love than I was.
I don't feel like I have to hide from his eyes,
in order to maintain the illusion of perfection.
If, in his eyes I am perfect, I will accept his verdict.
And where perfection was lacking,
he helped bring it about with his own hands.
Not the perfection of an airbrushed photo,
but the perfection of healed flesh and whole skin.
Of function where there was brokenness.
When I first saw the damage, I cried.
I couldn't look until it was nearly done healing, and I still cried.
But he saw it in every stage, and he never recoiled.
He didn't cry, and he didn't criticize, and he didn't complain.
He changed bandages twice a day.
And he did the dishes while I laid there.

Husbands:
if you want to be married to a beautiful woman,
let your love make her beautiful.
Don't compare her to the unflawed women you see.
The ones who haven't borne your children in their bodies.
Don't shame her for the thing that she is.

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new

The Overcoming Blood

I find myself pondering the life that's in the blood.
The life of sin, that infects and reproduces,
that multiplies and overwhelms,
and results in a life bled out.

There was a doctor laboring in a hopeless fight
to save his patients from a death that just kept conquering.
And he got infected with it, too.
And he knew the disease, and he isolated himself.
And by the grace of God, he overcame it.
He was raised up from that death bed,
and his face glows when he speaks.
And his wife's face looks full of joy and wonder.
And he's been asked to share his story with news channels,
and to speak to Congress,
and to talk to the President about how to conquer this death.

But more than that:
he keeps opening his veins for fellow human beings,
and donating his blood -- the overcoming blood.
It was something that a recovered patient had done for him,
while he lay dying of the incurable plague.

And I think on Jesus, dying of my sin,
and raised up full of Life,
and He opens Himself up to conquer my infection.
He offers His overcoming blood,
to fight my plague from the inside out,
so I can grow clean and whole.
The Life is in the Blood.

And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, 
and because of the word of their testimony; 
and they loved not their life even unto death.  
~Revelation 12:11

In Among the Ruined

Main Street, Beit Shean

 

Wherever He went --

in villages, cities, or the countryside --

they brought the sick out to the marketplaces.

They begged Him to let the sick

touch at the least the fringe of His robe,

and all who touched Him were healed.

~ From Mark 6

It's a true story.

But Jesus told another about a man who'd been accosted 

and left bleeding on a road. 

On a road with plenty of space 

for the 'holy' men to cross to the other side 

before they became unclean with the touch of bleeding death.

Unlike those men, our Jesus waded in among the ruined.

He let His clothes and Himself be grasped at by the desperate;

by the ones dragged and carried to Him;

the ones who limped to Him;

and the ones who crawled along the way,

trying to stay out from under the trampling feet of the healthy.

There were, I am sure, those who had earned their misery.

They had done what ought not to have been done,

and were suffering in themselves the due penalty for their sins.

And there were those who had been sinned against by others,

or failed in some way by those who ought to have been more careful.

He was a magnet for them all.

For the broken and the damaged.

The ones forbidden from the sanctuary.

The ones forbidden from society.

The fringe of His robe would be where the dirt collected.

Where the dust of His feet was kicked up in a cloud.

Maybe I can touch some of the dirt that touched Him. 

I waited patiently for the Lord to help me,

and He turned to me and heard my cry.

He lifted me out of the pit of despair,

out of the mud and the mire.

He set my feet on solid ground

and steadied me as I walked along.

He has given me a new song to sing,

a hymn of praise to our God.

Many will see what He has done and be amazed. 

They will put their trust in the Lord.

~From Psalm 40

I was so foolish and ignorant;

I was like a beast before You.

Nevertheless I am continually with You;

You hold me by my right hand.

You will guide me with Your counsel,

and afterward receive me to glory.

~ From Psalm 73

Sick All Along

Over eight years ago I was suffering from an infection whose seriousness I did not recognize. I thought I had a minor problem (misdiagnosed by myself), and watched it as it did not improve. There's a funny thing about watching something bad. When it turns a little worse, you can't tell. You think, Is that worse, or is it the same? And you keep thinking that maybe it's improving. Well, with my misdiagnosed minor problem, which was slightly uncomfortable at the beginning, I lived for several weeks. It began to be an obviously not small problem, but by then I was intimidated by the possible consequences of seeing a doctor. A doctor might tell me it was worse than what I had decided it was. I read in a book that if it was what I was afraid it was, the pain would be excruciating. So I waited longer. Until the pain did become excruciating. Then I called.

He couldn't see me until the next day. When he did see me, he looked worried. He put me on a heavy antibiotic, a narcotic pain killer, and told me to call him if it wasn't obviously improving in twelve hours. And he told me to treat it with heat. I went home and did just that. Part way through the prescribed treatment, I felt an end to my pain, and rejoiced that it was working. I thought the pain killers were making me crazy, so I stopped taking them. I didn't realize I was delirious. When the twelve hours were up, I called and spoke with a nurse, described my condition, and the strange coloration that was now part of it, and was given a hearty, "Sounds like you're getting better!" I never spoke to the doctor.

The next day, my problem exploded. Literally. On the phone with a doctor (but not mine), I was told to bandage it, and that it was an improvement. I didn't want to sit in an ER on a Saturday night with a newborn, so I was glad to not have it looked at. The bandages kept sticking to the wound, and pulling skin off whenever I changed them. My husband looked at it on Monday morning and insisted I call my doctor and have it looked at, because it wasn't right. Something was wrong. I wanted to go see our friends, and wasn't happy to listen to him.

The doctor, when he had finished ripping the bandages off, grew very pale. His eyes looked huge. He said in an obviously trying-to-keep-calm voice, "I'm going to call my friend Dr. A over at the hospital and have her take a look at you." I just wanted an ointment that would keep my bandages from sticking. I wanted to go to lunch. I was still delirious, and my thoughts weren't connecting coherently.

I said, "I just don't want this to be gangrene."

"Technically, that's what that is," he said. He sent me to the hospital with a hug. His eyes looked afraid.

At the hospital, the triage nurse and the ultrasound tech stood with their mouths hanging open, speechless. "How did this happen to you?" one of them finally asked.

I felt stupid. "I don't know. I thought..." I thought it was okay. I didn't know I needed help.

They called the specialist down, and she was fast. She looked at the problem, watched the ultrasound, and said, "We need to take you upstairs now." In a whirlwind, they were lifting me onto a gurney, explaining a surgical procedure I was adverse to, and shoving release forms in front of me to sign.

"I can walk. I'm fine. I want you to do it under local -- I don't want you to give me anything that'll hurt my baby. He's breastfeeding. He won't take a bottle."

The doctor was firm but kind. "We're not doing this under a local. And you can't walk."

In the prep room for surgery, a nurse lifted the blanket to tuck a warm one around me and saw I was still in street clothes. She yanked off my pants. Another lady from anesthesia talked cheerfully with me. She injected me with something. "What is that for?" I asked.

"To help you relax."

Oh. They wheeled me into the operating room, asked me to sit up, look straight up at the big light, and open my mouth as wide as I could. Under the influence of my 'relaxation', I did just what they asked, wondering all along, I wonder why they want me to do that?

When I woke up, I had a gaping wound. Cavern, really. And oh, the relief. It felt a hundred times better. My husband had to be trained to pack the wound, and he had to continue doing it for over three months. It was an ordeal.

Years later, I was pondering the words of Jesus to the Pharisees. He was eating with some tax collectors and other unsavory characters, and the Pharisees were bothered. "Why does He eat with such people?" they asked.

Jesus heard them and answered, "People who are well do not need a doctor, but only those who are sick."

Jesus, our Great Physician, is found among the sick. In the past, I always thought the tax collectors were the 'sick', and the Pharisees in the story were the 'well'. But thinking on His words, I remembered my condition when I had an infection that I didn't think was an infection, and when it deteriorated to gangrene, and the pain grew significantly less, and so I delayed seeing my doctor again. I was sick all along. But I didn't think I was sick. I didn't think my condition was serious enough to need a doctor. So I didn't call.

Those Pharisees were sick. In another place, Jesus said they were blind. They needed the doctor, too. But they wouldn't call.

In the Tombs

A cliff on the Sea of Galilee

My husband was reading to me and our children about a week ago from Luke 8:26-39.

It says in the story that when Jesus stepped out of the boat, a demon-possessed man met Him. "And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but in the tombs." This man was so bad that he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles, but he broke the bonds and was driven by the demons into the wilderness. The passage in Mark 5 gives the additional information that always, night and day, he was in the mountains crying out and cutting himself with stones. And it says he saw Jesus from afar and ran and worshiped Him.

As I listened to this story which I have heard so many times, a question came to me: What do you think this man's biggest problem was? Was his biggest problem being naked? I mean, the inappropriateness of it! Look away, Christian. You don't want to be corrupted by his nakedness. In fact, maybe it would be best, Jesus, if you don't go to the Gadarenes. There's a man over there who hangs out completely naked. What will people think if You are seen with him? You're the Son of God. Consider how it will look.

Was his biggest problem that he was homeless? That he was obsessed with the dead? Was it that he was not hygienic? He was probably covered in infected bloody wounds. He needed everything. He lacked modesty -- even a basic sense of decency. He didn't have a job, because he was too busy cutting himself and screaming. He lacked friends. No one wants to remain with a person so socially retarded. But none of these things were his biggest problem. His biggest problem was not external. It wasn't the nudity, the homelessness, or the medical conditions.

He was full of demons.

And Jesus, our Hero, our Savior, came looking for him. Looking for the naked man. Looking for the homeless man. The one who stumbled over mountains screaming and gashing himself, and didn't go to synagogue. The one who couldn't be bound with the chains of society's guardians. That miserable man who was tormented by entities who hated him -- who wanted him bleeding and screaming out in pain and homeless and naked -- cold in the winter and blistered in the sun, bitten by every insect, driven to destroy himself. Maybe he did have a basic sense of decency. Maybe that was part of the torment. Maybe he was humiliated by his horrible condition. But he couldn't escape them.

I think it's interesting that seeing Jesus from afar, he ran to worship Him. I think the man was desperate. But it's strange that he begged Jesus not to torment him. Was it the demon begging, or the man? Was the man aware of his own horrific guilt? Or was the demon aware that God values His creation, and doesn't look kindly on those who torment them? If the man, especially strange. We do get twisted ideas from the enemy about what God's plans are for us. "Don't torment me!"

When the town came to see the economic damage caused by the demons (a far greater tragedy in their minds than this poor man's long suffering at their hands), it says they found him sitting and clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. They had tried many times to bind him with chains that would control his offensive behavior. But Jesus cleaned up the real problem. He set him free from the terror and slavery of his life. And there the man was, at peace, at rest, coherent, and clothed. Oh, I love Jesus. He is not one to put band aids on gangrene. He fixes us from the inside out. Demons first. Clothes later.

Jesus said to the man when he begged to stay with Him, "Go home to your friends and tell them what great things God has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you." God's compassion on him was not another chain. And in the freedom he was given, his one desire was to follow Jesus. To stay with Jesus. Can't say I blame him.