“I’m running to the store, do you need anything?”
“Yeah, can you get me a new body while you’re out?”
This is a running joke between my husband and me. It’s kind of funny but mostly pitiful.
There’s a real grief attached to this joke.
Because really, I would like him to grab those new curtains I’ve been eyeing up, or that new curling iron that promises it will make my hair look amazing, and that flowery dress that would be super cute to wear to that wedding later this summer.
There are things that I want him to grab at the store for me.
But those material things seem pathetically inconsequential compared to what I really want:
Healing.
I really do want a new body.
Because as lovely as those curtains would look on my bedroom windows, what I really want is to have the energy and stamina I need to clean my bedroom.
And while I’m sure that curling iron would make my hair look divine, I would much rather feel well enough to wash my hair consistently.
And, yes, that dress would look lovely at the wedding of my former ring-bearer this summer, but I would show up in a burlap sack if it would mean showing up at all. I just want to be able to go.
Two years ago this summer, I started showing signs of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, a debilitating autonomic nervous system disorder. It would take a couple more months for me to be diagnosed and several more months after that for me to fully grasp what having this illness meant: that I would be sick and disabled for the rest of my life.
It’s been two years of grieving what I’ve lost and slowly accepting what I’ve been given.
Yet this I know is true:
I may be stuck with this sick and broken body for (Lord-willing) the next 30? 40? 50? years. And those years will undoubtedly be just as hard, frustrating, and exhausting as the last two years have been.
But because my hope is built on Jesus’ broken and resurrected body, I know that a brand new, resurrected body is also in my future. It will be my body, but it will be perfect. And compared to the eternity I will spend living, working, loving, and worshiping my Savior in that brand new, perfect, healthy body — the time I spend in this broken one will seem but an insignificant blip.
And here is something else I know to be true:
That though I am outwardly wasting away, I am inwardly being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16).
Outwardly, my sickness is obvious. I wear compression socks, leggings, and binders all over the place to keep my blood flowing and my joints from swelling. I’ve gained a significant amount of weight. I walk slowly and sit down often. I lose my breath from simply moving across the room. If I stand and talk to you for too long, you will hear an alert from the heart rate monitor on my arm telling me that I need to sit down soon or risk passing out. It’s one of the two heart-rate monitors I have on me at all times.
But here’s the amazing part:
If you were to ask me to choose between the beautiful, skinny, perfect size-6 girl I was 20 years ago and the overweight, weak, tired, broken 38-year-old woman I am now: I would choose this 38-year-old broken body every. single. time.
Because that beautiful 18-year-old was plagued with insecurity, anxiety, depression, self-righteous pride, and, ironically, crippling body shame.
And, although I can’t say those sinful tendencies have completely disappeared, at almost 38, I have seen my inward self become so renewed, because of my illness, that my former struggles are a mere shadow of what they used to be.
I will take a softer midsection if it means a softer heart any day.
So in the miraculously paradoxical way that defines how God works, my sickness has healed me in all the ways that matter most.
And as awful and hard as these last two years have been, I wouldn’t trade the transformation that God has done in my inward self for anything.
Not even a new body.
So, the next time my husband runs to the store, I think, maybe, I’ll just ask him to grab those curtains.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. • 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
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