PrintWHY WAS I CRYING?
I walked through the front door of our home, flopped in a chair and, to my surprise, found myself weeping. What was going on? Just one hour earlier I had been discharged from hospital. Although I felt physically fragile, I was grateful that the surgery had been successful. So why was I crying?
I fully expected that sometime during the 4 weeks leading up to the surgery I would be suddenly confronted with the enormity of what I was about to undergo and that I would have to battle nerves and anxiety in increasing measure right up until the moment that the anesthetic took effect. That confrontation never came.
Instead, what we experienced was a sense of peace that enveloped Bev and I right up to the time that I was taken into the operating theatre. But given the number of people who prayed for us over those four weeks, this should not have surprised us.
But what I didn't expect was to be ambushed by my emotions after the surgery.
As I have reflected on that ambush, I have come to see that those tears were an expression of grief and loss. It wasn't so much that I had lost a kidney to cancer although that was a component of that whole scenario. What I was feeling (and still am) was the loss of my general health. Every day I live with the reality of Parkinson's Disease as it ever so slowly robs me of muscular strength and coordination.
But there's more to this emotional ambush than just the awareness of physical restrictions. There have been other losses over recent years.
For the past 40 years I have had the immense privilege of teaching and preaching the Word of God to many hundreds of people. I have found great fulfillment in that role. Last week I was asked by the Pastor of our new Church if I would be willing to assist him by preaching in a few weeks. Normally I would have unhesitatingly agreed. But with the physical limitations I now experience, I'm no longer sure I have the physical ability to do so. I realize now that this preaching opportunity may yet represent another loss in my life.
However, that realization then led to a far more significant connection. It is almost three years since I resigned as a full time Pastor - a resignation that I considered premature at the time - because I no longer had the physical and emotional resources to adequately fulfill my role. In summary, what I think has happened is that the most recent loss (i.e. the surgical removal of kidney) has put me in touch with the sense of loss of my general health.
But that wider sense of loss has, in turn, connected me with an even greater sense of loss - the loss of the opportunity to fulfill my life's calling as a Pastor and Teacher of God's people. What emotion (perhaps more than any other) accompanies a sense of loss? My answer? GRIEF! Such grief can be expressed in other emotions like depression, anger, denial and hopelessness.
The tears that day were tears of grief because of a deepening sense of loss.
Now the last thing I want this journal entry to be is some kind of "pity party". I simply want to be honest and realistic as I face my emotional response to the awareness of loss in my life. But I don't want to become imprisoned in that grief. It's one thing to be authentic in owning my grief. It's quite another to move on with the rest of my life and to do so in the strong confidence that God's plan for my life continues to unfold.
So, will it be an emotional prison for me or will it be emotional release as I seek to handle these emotions in a way that resolves them rather than suppresses them?
