FINISHED THE BOOK

It's 2:24 in the morning.  At 11:30, I went to bed with Don Piper's book and a flashlight.  My primary goal was to read myself to sleep.  But the book got so 'maddeningly' interesting that there was no way my brain could do whatever it does to make me close my eyes and go to sleep, so I just went on and on, reading until there was no more page to read.  I even read everything that was printed on the covers, just wanting to know more about the stories of lives the author's experience has impacted.

DEUT. 10:21 He is your God, the one who is worthy of your praise, the one who has done mighty miracles that you yourselves have seen.

I just found out that I have finished the Heaven part yesterday night.  When I started to read again last night, I was expecting to read more about the heavenly time of the author.  I was disappointed... disappointed in a funny way.  I said funny for lack of neurons to come up with a more suitable word.  What followed after the '90 minutes in heaven' was a detailed description of the painful process of healing that the author has undergone after his body had been mangled in a horrible car accident that has taken his life for 90 minutes and the miracle of his coming back to life with almost severed limbs and other unimaginable injuries:  Details that have both touched and rebuked me.

Compared to the pain, suffering, healing process and everything that Don Piper had been through, mine couldn't even come close to even 1%. I was in the hospital for 4 days; he was completely immobile in the hospital for 105 days, and 13 more months in a hospital bed at home.  I endured pain for a few days, he for 15 years.  Except for incomplete organs in my body, I still have a normalcy to look forward to after I am restored to health.  He had to adjust and readjust and learn a new 'normal.'  So my initial reaction was to berate myself and say, "What right do you have to feel depress? You must be such a weak specimen of a human being to get all worked up in such a little thing as losing not even a formed baby, even if let say you've waited for it for years!  You are so overreacting!!!!"  As soon as those statements were formed in my mind, I read another part of the book that made me realize that I am blindly heading to another dead end.  I saw myself in the author, although his experiences of suffering were of far more greater magnitude than mine, there are undeniable similarities in the process of going through each stage and the same lessons to be learned in the process, which fortunately for me, I can learn from someone else’s experience. 

2COR. 1:3-4 All praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the source of every mercy and the God who comforts us. 4 He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When others are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.

True, our sufferings were of different levels.  Nevertheless, the human reaction to disruption of our normal life, and healthy body, be it short term or long term, transient or permanent seems to be the same in most if not all people.  He raged at his helplessness and took it out on the people taking care of him.  I did too.  He suffered from acute depression; I'm still getting over mine.  (Well, I'm by personality a depressed person, if there is such one, but I have seen myself go to a deeper level of it these last few weeks.  I resent help for as long as I can help it, and if I can't help it, I feel embarrassed to the core that I tend to withdraw or get unreasonably irritated even with genuine kindness.) The book rebuked me in this as I learned that not letting people care for you, even by merely saying no to their offer of help is same as robbing them of a way to minister to you, of showing their love.  For how many days since the surgery, people would come by and ask me how I am doing and I'd say I'm ok, period.  They'd see me doing things and they'd tell me to take it slow and easy and I would be so irritated, I'd say, if I don't move, I'd get sick, or the doctor said I should be running by now, or I used to be a nurse you know, I know what I'm doing, and other lines to that effect.  And then when I write or relate it to other people, either I'd make it funny or I'll be as detach as I can be, so that people would think I'm truly ok and leave me alone.

Don Piper's emotional healing did not begin until someone told him to open up and let others see that he is vulnerable and that he does need help. Perhaps, subconsciously, I've been waiting for someone to push me to be honest with myself but none of my family or friends could do it because I always appear ok to them; not much physically maybe but I wear this mask that I am emotionally and spiritually in control of myself by showing them that nothing has really changed: That during our prayer meetings, I can still, without prior notice, share to them a passage that I have been working on which has touched or spoken to me; that I am still the unconversant, serious, boring person that I always have been.  I haven't realized it (perhaps I did, but was just too proud to admit it) until after I read the book that it was really pride that has been keeping me from facing the reality that I still have emotional issues that I need to deal with. I have been trying to keep busy with work or someone else's problems so that I don't have to look inward and see that my heart is not in the right place in all these.  So unless I come out and face my ghosts and not keep on denying that I am in fact miserable, I will never be completely healed.

I don't promise myself that after I go to bed and wake up again later today, I'd be okay.  But at least a window has been opened...

JER. 3:17 I will give you back your health and heal your wounds, says the Lord.