It struck me today how momentary life has seemed to Emily and I over these past 3 and a half weeks. It seems like it took only hours for her to go from walking, to needing a wheelchair, to being too weak to leave her bed. Every moment brought further complications. Each day was struggle enough and we could barely think about the next other than to hope that it would be better than the last. Honestly I can barely begin to reconstruct the past several weeks. It seems like the days have run into each other in a haphazard and swirling miasma of suffering and waiting punctuated only by a few bright spots of visits and messages of support from all of you.
I realized last night that I had been looking forward to Easter as one of those singular moments of hope amidst all of this confusion. Good Friday fit right in with what was going on, and I hoped that Easter day would come and bring ... well I guess I don't know what I hoped for on Easter, but I struggled to make my understanding of the meaning and power of Easter fit with our current experience.
It was my misunderstanding.
Chris' comment, however unrelated, gave me pause to consider how thinking about Easter as a season (the 50 days between Easter day and Pentecost) provides a much better context for thinking about Emily's struggle with GBS. It does so, I believe, in two ways:
First, and most obviously, thinking of Easter as a 50 day long season reminds me that sometimes things take time. Just as we cannot rush toward pentecost, Emily and I cannot rush her healing. There is nothing that can be done medically to make her heal faster. At this point it is a waiting game. We wait for her lungs to be strong enough so that she no longer needs the ventilator. We wait for her nerves to re-grow themselves, and her brain to remember what to do with them. We wait for a thousand miniscule and unknown victories that will mark her body's resurrection. We wait, and we pray for patience.
Secondly, the reassurance that Easter is 50 days reminds me that there is an end to this season, and that this end is marked by Pentecost. This is no small coincidence.
I'm quite sure all pastors, theologians and the like have their favorite scriptural stories. The ones that they return to time and again because they hold some special meaning. I do not mean memory verses, I mean whole narratives that have shaped and formed them in some deep way. I love the book of Acts. I could read it ad infinitum. For me, the birth of the church is no less a miracle than Jesus' resurrection. In fact, if we are to be the body of Christ then the birth of the church is, in many ways, Jesus' resurrection. It stirs my blood when, in the beginning of Acts Jesus tells the disciples that he will be leaving them but not to worry because he'll be sending the Holy Spirit (the paraclete, the comforter, the advocate) and that God's spirit will reside among them.
Part of the reason I like this - I must confess - is that I picture the disciples standing there dumbfounded, trying to figure out what Jesus just said. The 50 days between Easter and pentecost re-enact this period of waiting and wondering. Jesus promised that God's spirit would come, but he didn't tell them when or what it might look like. They were left to figure out what to do in the meantime. I think it's pretty easy to draw parallels between their situation and the period of waiting in which Emily and I find ourselves. We have begun to see signs of resurrection in Emily's progress, but we await the fullness of this resurrection, and trust in God's grace to sustain us in the meantime.
So what are these signs of the resurrection? Over the last two days the respiratory therapists have been able to lower Emily's ventilator settings as her body begins to reclaim it's ability to breath for itself. She continues with physical therapy, and today her therapist noted improvement in her muscle control over her head and shoulders. I've begun to see a brightness in her eyes that has been gone for many days. I believe that brightness to be a reflection of the light at the end of the tunnel.
It may yet be weeks or months before Emily sees the progress for which she so desperately hopes, but that is the season in which we find ourselves. May our Pentecost come soon.
