Time to Heal

While I cannot remember all of his instructions, I recall the exact words of the surgeon when he was explaining the timing of my recovery. "You should be prepared to be completely off your feet for at least two weeks."

I thought he was joking. My eyebrows raised in an instant. The surgeon must have noticed because his next question was, "Can you get someone to cover for you for two weeks?" With those words, I started to make plans for what I could do with two weeks in a chair with limited to no mobility.

I stuffed my bag with every commentary on Mark that I own, convinced that I could get all of my Advent sermons outlined, if not written. I brought home reporting paperwork for a grant we received last summer. I made sure I had all the emails and notes made in reference to a book to be written with a colleague. I had my coworker print labels for the congregation's Christmas cards while I purchased all the stamps needed. My to-do list was long, impressive and ambitious.

My recovery time was shaved in half when a skin graft was not needed in the operating room. I've only been home for nine days, and I plan to return to the church tomorrow. While I have kept up on thank you notes for meals and tangible expressions of concern that have been delivered to our home, I have nothing else to show for what's been accomplished during this extended stay at home. I've had little to no energy to do anything. My body and mind have seemingly stopped for a while.

I found myself completely frustrated at the lack of evidence for my productive self midweek. How could I be here with all this time and do nothing?

But I then realized I have done something. I've done some of the hardest and most important work for this season of my life. I've taken time to heal. I've heard my body say "please stop," and I've allowed myself to faithfully respond. I've listened to the pain and made space to identify it, sit with it, and not allow it to take over. And I've been reminded in powerful ways of how poor of a job we do when it comes to taking time for anything, much less our deepest needs - especially the need to heal.

We expect to pass through the waters as if riding in a speed boat instead of waiting for the tide to be at its lowest point.

We get sick, and we seek to immediately return to work, stuffing our purse with every cure for a common cold on some days - while other days mustering every ounce of energy within us to step inside the office despite something much more serious going on inside our bodies.

We lose a loved one and wonder why we are crying six months later. Worse yet, a colleague loses a loved one and we cannot fathom why she's still not herself after a month of being back on a job.

We make it through a separation or a divorce and believe the holiday season will not impact us much even though it's our first holiday season being alone - divorced, separated, widowed.

We experience a miscarriage and expect things to be okay by our next cycle, unable to even talk about it much because no one knew we were pregnant, let alone enduring the pain of unexpected loss.

We are told we have an invasive form of melanoma, one of the deadliest types of skin cancer. We get through the surgery. We emerge a week later as a survivor. And we are tempted to return to normal as if nothing really happened.

But what if everything happens in these moments of change, loss, pain, and transition? What if the best gift we can give ourselves in these moments, as well as the people who are experiencing similar situations around us, is time - steady, not rushed, sacred, life-giving, abundant time to heal?

It's the eve of Advent, a season of waiting and watching for God to come again and make all things new. The signs around us will all point to more - more spending, more doing, more eating, more drinking, more buying, more baking, more wrapping, more writing, more, more, more. It's tempting to miss Advent all together each year and skip right to Christmas. But what would it take for us to make space during this season - to push aside all the other competing priorities and simply be? To take time to examine each part of our body, mind and spirit in an effort to discern what's in need of healing? What if the gift we should most ask for and then seek during this season is time - time to sit, to wait, to reflect, to watch, to be still? What would it take for us to take all the time we need to heal?