Jesus

Lately the hardest part of, what?, not infertility, as obviously I am not infertile, but, I don't know, being a house of death, is being an eye witness of my own flesh.

I can see the symptoms, feel them, but despite what I see and feel, there are no positive results. There are no answers that any test can see. I may as well be a lunatic because no amount of seeing or feeling provides answers or healing but instead leaves my Doctor eyeing me wearily.

This leaves me, yet again, completely alone. It leaves me trapped inside a body of death. It leaves me watching helplessly, knowing something isn't right, and begging God fiercely to overcome the failure of my flesh for the sake of my children.

The awful thing about my symptoms is that they aren't symptoms that are causing me trouble or illness, symptoms that must be addressed for the sake of my own health, instead they are symptoms that seem to mock me, giant billboards that only I can see that serve to constantly remind me that my body is broken and will NOT protect my children, but will instead certainly discard them. The only purpose the symptoms seem to serve is to be a thorn in my flesh, a reminder that I am indeed handed over to this fate.

What is more, if it is not medicine that is failing me, it would then be finances.

I do not feel despair in this. I continue to do things I have been told to do, shots in the dark if you will. Instead, it is the reality of life.

Today, in Bible class, my husband spoke of when Uzza reached out to touch the ark of God and was immediately killed. It was not a punishment, it was reality. Just as it would not be a punishment handed out by the electric company if someone was killed by messing with a power line, so when Uzza piously reached out his hand to save the ark from falling, so it killed him simply because of what it was. Man is sinful, God is not, a sacrifice had not yet been given for the sins of the world that would allow man to preside in God's presence and God in man's. Therefore, when Uzza touched God, it killed him. Instantly. David turned it into an emotional affair, as humans often do, and was angry at God. But God cannot cease to be God simply to pamper human emotions.

My flesh will always fail. It is reality. If not here, then somewhere else. This does not express God's sentiments or affections towards me, it simply is the reality of being fallen.

Sometimes this causes me great grief, but other times it simply causes me to rush to God's Word and His sacraments. Those sacraments and that Word speak truth to all of my parts and remind me that the fight is not about me or my flesh, it is about Christ and His free salvation. It is about life that is mine. Children are indeed blessings, but they are not mandatory. If everything I own and all that are dear to me were swept away, Jesus is still Jesus.

My body is broken. What of it? My children are dead. What of it? A greater reality exists and is indeed the actual reality. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

And when He does, all of these things that seem so real (that is, the things that seem eternal because of the nature of our current existence) will not be real anymore. They are not real now, in that they are not eternal. Jesus, He is real. He makes us real. And He comforts, consumes, and takes away all of the things that are not real, but instead are a product of being fallen, and behold, we are a new creation. Forever.

photo credit