C’mon really? Tell me you didn’t go there.
Luke has a pair of hermit crabs. He loves to lure them out of their safe haven shell to get a better look at them. They can stay amused for hours.
Yes, the Arnold home is a swirling madhouse of dizzying entertainment.
Anyway, I’ve learned a lot from those little critters (the crabs). They live in a certain size shell and when they outgrow it, they move on to a bigger shell that suits them better.
There. I could just leave the post at that and let you ponder. Richness abounds.
Yet alas, I expound because I feel a human need to feel the awkward space.
We’re all hermit crabs. We live and breathe in these shells. We struggle in this skin until one day our souls finally outgrow the body’s shell life. After weeks of doctors tugging on stitches and nurses playing connect the dots on my arms and getting different diagnoses and prognoses, the fragility of my mortality was at first unsettling and then very freeing. This body is just a shell where I temporarily dwell – and it’s not up to me when I’ll move again.
Someday I’ll leave this shell behind and my soul will find a new place to live. I know where that place is going to be for me. Anyone who doesn’t, well – I’m not sure how they sleep at night. But I digress.
Since I recognize the frailness of skin over bone, I’m somehow becoming unaffected by its limitations and disappointments. A portion of lyrics from The Call’s “I Don’t Wanna” always hits me straightaway –
“I can only hope you feel your tears I can only wish you’d feel the hope
I can only hope that I can see
out beyond this skin that covers me.”
The soul is much more in command than this skin that covers me or the blood that runs through these veins. Even with that, I am of the unwavering belief that we are not in control at all. You can cover yourself and others in prayer and all the padding you can muster. But you are a character in a novel you don’t know the end to, as badly as you want to skip to the last page and find out what happens.
Once this revelation settled in me, the number of days I have left on this earth – many or few – suddenly become irrelevant. You live every day as if it’s your last, because it just might be – and if it’s not, well it’s a day lived you can feel good about. Whether you’re chronically sick or at the top of your game, you scream the truth with any air you have left in your lungs. You empty it all out so that if you come back for another day, you have a full reservoir to fill back up again. Everything needs topping off because you’ve been spent in your “element” – your crosshairs where passion meets aptitude and you’re doing what you do because you are at peace with what only God can do and with what only you can do.
Ecclesiastes 2:22 ~ What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? 23 All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless. 24 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?
Ecc 5:15 Naked a man comes from his mother’s womb, and as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand.
16 This too is a grievous evil: As a man comes, so he departs, and what does he gain, since he toils for the wind ?
Let me say this one last thing. I haven’t gone into great detail about the latest developments on my health, and I’m not going to. But please take this from someone who has become, as docs put it, “a medical phenomenon”...don’t take a day for granted. Love til it hurts. Breathe in life and exhale hope to those around you. Don’t be selfish with your health. What are you toiling for?
Over the past 8 weeks I’ve spent more days inside a hospital room than I have outside of it. Be as grateful for a healthy, full life as much as I ache to have one.
Don’t, please don’t, live in the shadows.
So what is the end of the matter? After being in the valley for a while now, I still don’t know. And I don’t think we’re supposed to. We don’t get crib notes or a roadmap – just an owner’s guide.
PS – I will try and update the blog once a week. To be honest, it’s like reopening a scab every time and to be honest, I’m not up for the emotional trenching right now.
Maybe that will change, maybe it won’t. But the one thing you’ll always get with me is straight up honesty – ready or not.