By Colleen Tinker
I’d put it off as long as I could. “Bone on bone”, my orthopedist told me at least four years ago when the pain in my left knee had driven me back to the doctor. “You will eventually need a knee replacement.”
I bargained. “Is there anything else I could try?”
Being an expert in treating sports injuries, my doctor was willing to try time-buying treatments others might not. But now, four years, three medial off-loading braces, and two long-acting Synvisc injections later, I had no more bargaining chips. Richard reminded me that I had to face reality: either I would get a total knee replacement, or I would become progressively crippled, surrendering my life as I knew it to the consuming maw of pain and twisted joints imprisoned in a chair.
I couldn’t ignore reality any longer: I had to have the surgery.
Last Tuesday, March 5, my surgeon stood by me in the pre-op room, looked down at my left knee misshapen from years of walking on it without cartilage, and said, “You look like you just got off a horse!” His joke was not insensitive; what he was about to do within the next two hours would leave my leg straight and stable for the first time in recent memory.
The next morning as he discharged me, he reminded me not to be surprised when the long-acting anesthetic block wore off later that day. I could expect some serious discomfort, but I just needed to “stay ahead of the pain” with my medications.
It was wonderful to be home, and dear friends came to the house and made a Chinese meal for us. As the evening wore on, however, I remembered the surgeon’s words. The pain intensified as the evening wore on. By 9:00 PM I felt unable to converse as I tried to manage the pain, and by 11:00 PM I threw my reluctance to the wind and called him. His exchange took my number, and within minutes, the surgeon called me back and asked what I was experiencing.
“My pain level is at a solid ‘nine’ and moving upward,” I explained, frantic with being unable to manage my own body’s responses.
Patiently he reminded me that the block was expected to wear off, that the pain was not a surprise, and that he really could not do anything for me except to send me to the hospital where I could receive a shot of something stronger than my Norco pills.
Then he said something that, after the pain and mental fogginess wore off, has continued to impact me. He repeated that I could go to the emergency room, or I “could just remember that this is NORMAL, and it will not last.” I was foggy from pain, meds, and exhaustion, but I heard him explain himself with a personal anecdote.
“A while back I broke my leg, and during my worst pain, I spent one night on the floor with my dog repeating to myself, ‘This is temporary; it will not last.’”
Something happened in my own pain-sodden mind when my doctor told me his story. I knew two things: he was telling me the truth about my own suffering, and he was guaranteeing the veracity of his words by being vulnerable enough to tell me—merely one patient among hundreds—his own experience. He had normalized my crisis, and I knew I could survive the night without a trip to the ER.
The gift of “normal”
One week after that evening of intense post-operative pain, I am slowly feeling stronger and less helpless. I’ve even been able to walk around the house on the concrete sidewalk with my walker several times during the past two days. As I’ve gotten stronger, I’ve been thinking often of the impact of my doctor’s normalizing my experience of pain.
As former Adventists we each experience intense personal loss. No two of our stories are alike; our unique families and social circles react distinctly to our decisions to follow the Lord Jesus wherever He leads—even out of Adventism. Some of us retain contact with our Adventist loved ones, and others lose touch completely. The differences in degree of loss, however, are only superficial. The movement from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God’s Beloved Son is an infinite distance. No amount of intentional politeness can bridge the gap between death and life, and the difference this transfer creates is both invisible and profound.
When we suddenly find ourselves marginalized because we followed Jesus out of Adventism, we all tend to feel that our pain of loss and our grief at losing the familiar life we knew is uniquely paralyzing. Often we bargain: can we stay sympathetic with Adventism while personally leaving it behind? Can we keep our Adventist family soothed by observing Adventist practices when we are with them? Can we mitigate the effects of their anger by refusing to talk about the gospel that has changed us? Can we just be “loving” and find our common ground with Adventism and refuse to allow our differences to separate us?
Ultimately we realize that we cannot stop the deep separation that occurs between us when have been born again and our Adventist loved ones who do not fully trust Jesus. We realize over time that our losses may be permanent—and we are tempted to feel that no one can truly understand what we experience.
In fact, we often hear these words: “I thought I was the only one!” “I didn’t know there was anyone else like me!” “I thought I was crazy!”
Into this reality of pain and loss, God sends us the comfort of those who have walked this road ahead of us. We are not the first to lose our closest relationships because of the sword of the gospel, nor are we the last. Our losses are “normal”. Jesus Himself said these would happen, and with the stabilizing comfort of His words, He also brings us the comfort of those who have also suffered.
Matthew 10:34 & 37 record Jesus’ words to us who believe: “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword…He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” Yet Jesus does not end with His words guaranteeing pain and loss.
Verse 39 says, “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”
In other words, when we lose the lives we know and love for the sake of following Jesus, we find our true lives that the Lord Jesus Himself foreordained for us. Yes, this passage includes finding eternal life, but it also includes the life of service and meaning which are the fruit of our having been transferred into the kingdom of eternal life, the kingdom of God’s Beloved Son.
Mark 10:29–31 records these words of Jesus: “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last, first.”
Jesus promised us that we would lose relationships and property because of our commitment to Him, but we would also receive “a hundred times as much now in the present age” as we lose. It seems impossible that such an exchange is actually real; surely Jesus was using hyperbole, we rationalize. And yet—Jesus does not stretch the truth in order to convince us to believe.
He is very clear: what we gain in meaningful and close relationships when we trust Him far surpasses the closest family ties we may lose when the Lord transfers us out of the domain of darkness. Oh, yes—Jesus also promises that our gains would be accompanied by persecutions. Both are promises, yet the blessings of what the Lord gives us when we trust Him far outweigh the things we lose. Surprisingly, along with the new family in Christ we gain when the Lord plants us in His body, comes the unexpected blessing of discovering that we are not unique! Our brothers and sisters who have walked this road out of Adventism ahead of us begin sharing their stories, and we discover that there is hope!
Others have survived the losses of their most treasured relationships and even of jobs and belongings. The Lord begins to redeem our pain as others respond to His promptings by normalizing our experiences.
Often we who have left Adventism hear well-meaning Christians say, “You need to move on. There’s no need to keep looking back and reciting your experiences as Adventists.” We who have left, though, know that we have to look back in order to normalize the experiences of those just leaving. Each of us is unique, yet our experiences share a common core. We have left a religion shaped by a false gospel, and our entire worldview was shaped by that environment. Those just now leaving need us to normalize their experiences.
Whether our crisis is post-surgical pain or the ache of losing a loved one’s loyalty, the Lord sees our suffering. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor. 1:3, 4). †
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