From The Desk of David

If I am to be honest, I don’t want to write the words that follow. I don’t want to relive the pain and heartache. I don’t want to relive the tears. I don’t want to relive the night where my parents, in all their love and kindness, almost checked me into a mental hospital. I don’t want to relive the afternoon where my leg just fractured and the pain that followed. If any of this were up to me, I would love nothing more than just to forget it all. But that is not how life works, and in some strange and contradictory way, I am thankful life doesn’t work that way. Because I think if there was some way to forget, that some memory abolishing potion did indeed exist, I think the temptation to partake of it would be too great. I’m still recovering from the wounds of that time, both physical and emotional. But if surgery taught me anything, it is that sometimes the deepest cuts are made for the purpose of ultimate healing.

The room was filled with the strangest of emotions – it was hopeful anxiety. The room was filled with loved ones of those who were undergoing surgery that day. Each person quietly whispering among themselves, attempting to distract themselves from where they currently found themselves. The room smelled sterile. This sterility was interwoven with the smell of freshly baked bread which comprised of the woman’s sandwich. Normally, I wouldn’t have paid the smell any attention. But today, the scent of baked bread was nothing more than a reminder that I hadn’t eaten in twelve hours. But do not dare ask me to describe anything else of the room because my eyes were glued to the clock. I kept watching the seconds hand tick in rotation around, ordering the longest hand of the clock forward. It was past noon. Noon was when I was promised that this journey would begin. Noon was the bewitching hour. However, the clock read 1 PM. My mother, who was seated to my right, knew all too well that I was engaged in a staring match with the clock. She knew that my lack of food and dry mouth were not doing my anxiety any favors. She knew I was determined to stare down the clock. Her attempts to distract me with my favorite television show on Netflix were in vain. Even if my eyes were physically staring at the screen, I was still watching the clock.

Finally, I pondered again for the millionth time if I could have a drink of water. I was told I couldn’t allow anything past my lips passed midnight the previous evening. And even though I knew with this, it didn’t stop me from asking. My mother would then rise from her chair, inquire to the meek receptionist if I could have some water, and lastly, my mother would return with a tiny paper cup, barely filled with anything. “That’s it?” I would declare. I chuckled at the amount – or should I say lack thereof – of water in the tiny paper cup. I’m sure I let out some sarcastic comment about how that wasn’t enough water for an insect or something. But my snide remarks were nothing more than a dam that held back my fear.

Alas, I heard my name. We would gather our things and march back to the source of the voice that said my name. I would soon find myself in front of a medium built, tall, male nurse whose black thick-rimmed glasses hid his kind eyes. The imperfect row of teeth which were his greeted me. I would then follow him back to a small curtain-made room, asked to put on a dark blue gown that was an excuse for a modest piece of clothing, and interrogated about my medical history. Thankfully, the nurse’s smile could be seen through his thick black beard because that was the only thing keeping my anxiety at ease.

After being interrogated by multiple people about my medical history, the journey to the operating room began. I leaned back in the uncomfortable hospital bed, trying to relax. The white, square ceiling tiles began to flow past me like a rushing river. Within moments, I found myself laying on a padded, sterile operating table. The kind operating room staff offered to put on my favorite Taylor Swift song in a well-intended attempt to ease the pit in my stomach. But not even Taylor Swift’s restrained electronic beats and breathy vocals could distract me from where I was. I was lying on an operating table, about to have my leg cut open, a metal rod fixated on my knee, and some metal contraption that sounded too much like a medieval torture device strapped to the exterior of my leg.

My thoughts drowned out the sounds around me. The nurse gave me that anti-anxiety medicine he promised, right? My heart is beating so fast. I hope mom brings Chick-fil-A for me to eat once I get out of surgery. Where’s the doctor? He knows I have surgery today, right? Yes, David. He knows you have surgery today. Just to try to calm down… My thoughts would soon be interrupted by an unknown face ordering me to take in a deep breath. It was at that moment that I realized, I had a clear mask on my face, and it smelled kind of funny. It smelled medicinal… And everything went black.

These were the moments that began one of the most difficult seasons of my life. Some English teacher once told me that you could tell how good a book was going to be based on the first chapter. Whoever told her that lied. That couldn’t be a bigger load of crap. If how a story begins is a fair indicator of how the story shall progress, then I don’t want to read those stories. Because based on the beginning of my five-centimeter journey began, then the entire journey should have been easy. It should’ve been a journey full of support and expected obstacles, but it was far from that. The past season was one of the most difficult and lonely times I’ve ever experienced. This five-centimeter journey was one marked with pain and loneliness. It was a journey full of long nights and hospital visits. It was a journey full of irrational fear and forced numbness. This journey is something I’m learning to be proud of.

Normally, when someone asks about the number of scars, that I now have due to the pins that lined my leg, I offer some half-hearted joke about how their battle scars. I’m fairly certain you can see the fake look across my face. I don’t like talking about my scars. And it’s not because I feel I have not earned them. Trust me, I have. I don’t like talking about them because if I am to be honest, I still struggle with feeling ashamed of how I handle the entire situation. And please, keep your justifications. I’m sure I’ve heard them plenty of times. Sure, I went through hardship. I experienced more physical pain than I should have. I experienced more emotional pain that I should have. Far too often, I slept in a hospital bed rather than my own bed. And it wasn’t just orthopedic doctors that I had to see during the season. It was psychologists and psychiatrists too. And I suppose that is what I’m ashamed of. I suppose I’m ashamed that I forced my mom and dad to witness as I had meltdown after meltdown over pretty much everything. I had melted down about the fact that I could walk across the house because of the pain. I had melted down about how sick I was of the weight of the frame that was strapped to my leg. I melted down about how I missed my friends. I melted down about having meltdowns. At one point, it even got to the point where my parents, in all of their kindness and wisdom, they almost checked me into a psychiatric hospital. And I suppose that’s one more thing you could count against me.

So why do I feel shame about these things? I’ve been told that it’s not unreasonable I reached this point. But I still felt shame. I feel ashamed that I couldn’t control myself better and manage my emotions better. I think I felt ashamed because I had bought into the lie that my emotions were unholy, and I couldn’t give them over to God because they were, “irrational.” And because of this, I foolishly tried to hide them. Like Adam and Eve trying to hide after they had partaken of the forbidden fruit, I tried to hide. I tried to weave my emotions and together like leaves into a grass skirt to hide the nakedness of my soul. But then, I would come to realize that my actions were in vain because I knew He’d find me. I knew that He would walk in the coolness of the day, find me in my room, and confront me.

Why do I try to hide? I suppose I could blame Adam and Eve. I was just following their example anyways. They hid. So why couldn’t I hide? Yes, Adam and Eve may have hidden physically from the Lord but I – like many – try to hide my emotions. We no longer hide behind grass skirts but rather we hide behind the stained-glass windows of church. I’ve done it too many times to count, I walk into church with a fake confidence painted across my face, acting as if everything’s okay but, on the inside, I’m falling apart.

However, when we as redeemed people do this, we missed the point of grace altogether. We’ve been given unending grace not so that we can act like we have it all together, but rather we can grow during the times when we don’t. Grace doesn’t exist to create a perfect people, it exists to make a rescued people. The problem I had wasn’t that I didn’t handle the situation I was going through well; the problem was that I didn’t realize it wasn’t my responsibility to hold myself together. If you can find a human who has their act together all of the time, please let me know who they are – I’d love to meet them. I’d love to learn from them. No one has themselves together all of the time. Sure, they’ll be seasons where we live in healthy relationships and have a healthy mindset. And when those happen, great! Praise the Lord for those seasons! I hope that when you go through the seasons, you spend them helping others who may be going through a hard time. However, there will be seasons of unhealthiness. And that’s okay too. Author and pastor, Rich Wilkerson Jr, put it like this, “it’s okay not to be okay, but it’s not okay to stay that way.”

How simplistically elegant. There are times in life where living hurts. Author Isaac Arku surmised that “to be human is to experience pain and disappointment.” So yes, there is pain. Yes, we may hurt and suffer sometimes. But as my newfound lack of pain in my knee is proof of, a knife in the hand of a skilled physician can bring healing. And thanks, be that we serve the Greatest Physician of all.

Jesus, thank you for loving me even when I didn’t and don’t deserve it. Thank you for being the surgeon of my soul. I may not have enjoyed surgery, but I’ll stay on your operating table as long as you want me to.

For His Glory,

David Wickward