About three years ago, I was sitting in church and listening to a heartbreaking story of how a young married couple had just been devastated by a car wreck. The couple had been married for two years, and because of this wreck, the husband suffered a traumatic brain injury. The wife was unable to be there at the time, so received information over the phone about her husband's accident. She didn't know how to process the information. The husband was unconscious, and went into a coma for two months. As I was listening, I knew I had to help in some way. The person giving the story said that the wife was in dire need of help.
As the coma went on, and as the husband lie in the hospital bed, lifeless and uncertain, the wife prayed and cried and agonized over the possibility that her husband was not going to make it. People from the church responded. Some people joined the wife at the hospital. Some made meals. Some got together and prayed with and for the husband and wife. At the time, I was doing some odd jobs so I decided that the yard needed to be mowed on a weekly basis.
I started showing up to the house and mowing. I was hesitant about getting too close to the situation because I don't know how to respond with stuff like this. I'm not very good about dealing with tragedy. So, my natural reaction is to help out in a tangible way that doesn't involve very much emotion.
After two months of the coma, the husband blinked. A wave of gratitude swept over the wife and the whole church family. After a few more months, the wife moved the husband home. A friend and I began taking meals to the couple one night a week, and I continued mowing.
I would watch from the sidelines as she would take him to the bathroom, feed him, change his clothes, put him in bed, get him out of bed, brush his teeth, massage his arms and legs, and do many other things that would wear any sane person out. On a few occasions, she would lose her mind and just scream. Other times, she would laugh hysterically. And other times, she would just sit, depressed and hopeless. She was afraid of not having what it took to take care of her husband. I felt compassion for both of them. As I continued mowing, and watching, and taking meals, the powerlessness of the wife was rubbing off on me. I was realizing how much I wanted to help, but how little I could do.
As a way of helping the wife grieve, a small group was started for anyone who was dealing with overwhelming situations in life. At the time, I was just entering into alcoholic recovery. I began attending this group as a way to combat my own desire to drink. I needed another avenue to share my problems. Over time, we all bonded in a way that only a community of suffering people can. We shared our deepest pains, and a lot of the time everything seemed hopeless. But, we kept talking and kept supporting each other.
As we all got more and more vulnerable with each other, I fell in love with the wife and got real scared. I was too scared to say anything about it to anyone. I would keep showing up and denying the feelings that were growing inside of me. I thought, "What if someone finds out about this?" Thoughts of the pastor of my youth rolled through my head as I envisioned fires of hell and excommunication for people who committed adultery and fornication.
I kept showing up. Eventually, I couldn't keep the information to myself any longer. I told the wife that I loved her (as a sister). I couldn't completely let her know what I felt, because that would mean that I was a sinner. For months, I beat around the bush. My service to her and her husband had developed into continual visits to the nursing home where her husband was now. I would show up with my harmonica and another friend would bring her eukelale. We would eat with the husband, and get him out of his wheelchair in the hopes that we could teach him to walk again.
The wife and I began dating and taking care of the husband together. In a wild mess of jealousy, heartbreak, grief, fear, and silence, we maintained this secret relationship that scared the crap out of both of us. We were very afraid of anyone knowing about our relationship. I was afraid of the husband finding out, even though he couldn't cognitively recognize our relationship. Some days I would show up to the nursing home and find her lying in bed with her husband. Other times, as we would stroll with the husband through the halls, she would kiss him on the forehead and call him "babe."
In these moments, it felt as if my heart was being rung out like a wet rag. I kept my mouth shut, and bottled it up. I was afraid of saying anything out of my fear of rejection. More time passed, and we knew we couldn't remain silent about our relationship. So, we decided to arrange meetings with several of our most trusted friends at church. We sat down in living rooms and Waffle House to explain to these folks what was going on. We felt they had the right to know. The response we received was overwhelmingly unexpected. My mind would tell me that people were going to tell us we were living in sin and going against God's will, but we were received with compassion and dignity. We were validated. These people had enough compassion to understand that we were going through enough mental torture on our own to have people add more to it. The process of "coming out of the closet" was the first step of replacing shame with restoration. Although we have broken up three times, and it's still a crazy mess, we have come to accept the crazy mess. But, our belief systems have changed dramatically as well. Our relationship has come alive, and I think we each have come alive in our own ways. All three of us (including the husband) have a relationship that can't be scripted or generalized.
Some days the husband sees me as his best friend. Other times he sees me as his worst enemy. But, we know deep inside that we are just on a journey. We are not the guides. We have not done this deal perfectly. We have screwed up over and over, and we will screw up more. What once was dead and lifeless and broken into pieces is being restored in a way that's unbelievably breathtaking.
Sometimes, the dead hear the voice of God in a way that others can't. It is the only way they can find life and begin a process of resurrection. It may be the most illogical, unaccepted, sacrilegious way of doing things, but they know they are being moved and guided not by any human being but a still, small voice that provides the only sense of sanity they can find. The passage for Lent today tells us that Jesus decides and carries out the judgment he thinks is best for every person. Nowhere does it say in this passage that those who do wrong are going to live in eternal conscious torment. Instead, it says that the Father and the Son don't shut anyone out. They want everyone in on the life they offer. Jesus claims in the passage that he's been handed all honor and authority from the Father, so we don't have to worry about what our pastors, priests, and religious friends are going to say when they found out about how crazy we are and how unorthodox we are in our lifestyles.
As we go out today, may we accept that we aren't doing the whole life thing the right way. May we take Jesus up on his offer of real and lasting life, a life that isn't gauged by how righteous we are, but how much we are loved.
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