Reality Check

My dear Grandma made the comment to me over the Christmas holiday that she felt as though blogs were too much like the saccharine newsletters so many send at Christmas time and that she couldn’t get on board because she didn’t feel as though she was getting the whole picture. I understood where she was coming from, to a degree. I spent my junior year of high school as a functional quadriplegic and remember well the letter we received from a distant cousin telling us about her biggest drama of the year: her new yacht was too large to fit at her boat dock and they had to build a new one. Mom and I still chuckle about that letter. Mostly because it seemed so out of touch with whatever might be going on in the homes of the receivers of her year-end wrap up and report.

I think that blogs like mine can have the same effect. I make it a point to only touch on the fabulous, funny, cute, or warm fuzzy inducing moments and I generally leave the heavier topics out of this public forum altogether. I am deliberate about that decision, and I feel like it is worth it to me to explain just why that is. To do so, I will have to bare just a little of the heavy, so try to hang on just in case my heavy looks like my distant cousin’s boat dock next to yours.

After my younger brother died suddenly in 2003, I spent about two months in a cocoon like seclusion. Eric kept the coffee pot going and took care of the kids while I huddled over a space heater in our garage and watched religious television on a tiny black and white set. I spent hours hollowly watching preacher after preacher, and I realize now that I was searching and waiting for someone to make sense of why I had been so gutted. Why was my brother dead while other jerks were walking around with their jerk brothers? At the same time, my body began to slip a little deeper into M.S. deterioration and I was feeling like the chains of this fallen land’s darkness were tightening around my wrists and ankles by the second. I was completely bound by the reality of living here and the depression of that fact was more than I could withstand.

It was during this time of desperate searching for relief that I read John’s account of Jesus’ return from the dead.
¹⁹On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Did you see what I saw? The door was locked and suddenly Jesus was among them. He was real flesh – they touched him – and yet he was able to appear through the wall. Why would he do that? Why appear through the wall? Why not knock on the door? Why be so deliberate about suddenly appearing among them? As I read those words way back in my cocoon, I heard Jesus tell me, “The wall is not real. I am real.”

“Your brother’s death is not reality. I am reality.”

“Your failing health is not reality. I am reality.”

THIS WALL IS NOT REAL.

It was almost deafening; this voice telling me what reality is. It was a notion that gave me such peace that I stood from my spot, and slowly began to live and breathe again. I was firmly rooted in reality for the first time in my nearly 27 years of life.

This past year has found Eric and I facing all kinds of walls that tempted me to shudder at their reality, but I was always reminded of the simple truth I learned in my little garage cocoon: The wall is not real. I am real. I know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Jesus lives. I know that He is preparing my eternity with Him. I am so confident of my reality, that it makes whatever happens around me seem almost silly to take too seriously. I still grieve, and I still wince at the sting of certain blows, but I know the truth. And the truth has set me free.

So, while you are wrapping up your thoughts on all the high points of this past year and maybe wincing at some of the low points, take a moment to thank God for the heavier, less than blog worthy points. Thank Him for exposing the truth of His reality.

And now, with all due apologies to my Grandma, we will move on to our regularly scheduled saccharine.