john piper

We cried,
“How long, O Lord, how long
will we be made to wait, and swallow jagged shards of that unchristened chalice of whose warm wine we never took a taste and all we drank was emptiness unplanned?”

And he replied,
“Until you learn the song
that only sorrow sings, of how my soul regards your ev’ry wound, and malice
has no place in my design, but all is paced
to come with double blessings in my hand.”
- John Piper -

It’s amazing how a set of random words strung together decades and centuries ago can perfectly capture an experience. 

psalm 18:16-23

16 But me he caught – reached all the way from sky to sea; he pulled me out 17 that enemy chaos, the void in which I was drowning. 18 They hit me when I was down, but God stuck by me. 19 He stood me up on a wide-open field; I stood there saved – surprised to be loved! 20 God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him. When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start. 21 Now I’m alert to God’s ways; I don’t take God for granted. 22 Every day I review the ways he works; I try not to miss a trick. 23 I feel put back together, and I’m watching my step.

In the mornings leading up to the transplant, I would sit outside and read this verse. I had no idea of the deeper meaning it would have later on. 

walk with me

Mornings are hardest here at the hospital. I usually have nurses visit around 4 or so. After they run all their tests and check all their machines, I just lay there surrounded with darkness and beeping monitors and thoughts I can’t shake. Falling back to sleep is next to impossible, so I stopped trying.

I have a walker. Yes, it’s true. Imagine the skinny 90-year old bloke with socks up to his knees in a gown that announces to the world behind him that he’s leaving. Yeah, that’s me. Only my walker has a broken wheel that is teetering on survival. I know at any moment the wheel could go careening off into the great unknown, sending this 38-year old bloke tumbling with oxygen tank hot on his heels.

Now that you have the visual, I want to tell you about the first day I dragged myself around the hospital hallways at 4 am. It rocked me to my core.

There are probably very few people in the world who have been pushed to the full threshold of the human capacity for physical pain. I’m not one of those people either, but I have experienced pain in my body to the point that I wanted to quit. Indescribable pain that pushed me to my knees in tears every day for weeks. I can’t tell you how many times my cousin Rock would have to pick me up and tell me not to give up.

I know. Everything I’ve been talking about with faith and how Ryan’s life as an inspiration for my own – and I’m talking about hitting the OPT OUT button.

What a hypocrite.

I dragged myself out of my hospital room that first early morning and into the halls I’ve come to despise – if I’m being totally honest. I was thinking about my physical pain and how it was just the start. They talk about a 6-week rehab just to be able to walk and sit normally. That alone seemed impossible. Then there’s the emotional toll of it all. Then spiritually, how do I hold fast to what I knew was true in spite of it all? Simply put, I was feeling sorry for myself.

My walk at first was painfully slow. I would have to actually focus on putting one foot in front of the other to move forward. I was caught up in my head when I passed a room a few doors down from mine. A man was calling out for pain meds. I saw a nurse scuttle past me and run into another room where a woman was yelling something, and she didn’t sound happy – at all.

In at least one out of every two rooms I passed on that hall loop, someone was in audible pain and calling for help. And with every call out, a nurse frantically ran to that person’s room to try and ease the pain of the moment. Then it hit me.

Everyone is in pain.

Pain is not exclusive to me. Fathers have buried their sons killed in war. Mothers have given birth to stillborn babies. We’re all broken in some way – a disease, losing someone close, not having someone close to lose – you just don’t get a free pass through this life without taking on some kind of scar.

The saddest part is, I rarely take my eyes off my own pain to notice that pain is universal. It’s threaded through humanity, and we all just keep yelling for our painkillers.

Why do I have to go through my own suffocating pain before I can see and feel the pain all around me? And you know I’m not talking about just physical pain.

I guess if there’s anything positive in my pain is that I’ll never look at the world through the same lens. I know what it feels like to suffer. But so does my dad, who has buried a father, brother, best friend and now son – all prematurely and tragically. Pain haunts the meth user, the stay at home mom, the 58-year old corporate exec, and the family going into bankruptcy down the street.

Now it just comes down to what I do with what I see. 

scarred

Well I thought I’d just start off with addressing the 300-pound Gorilla in the room. It’s the thing most people are concerned about with me. And I know why. I’m not deluded. I know my role in bringing us to this point. I was the one with liver disease. I can’t change that. And every time I look in the mirror and see the 14-inch scar, I am reminded of it.

While I’m getting physically stronger and ready to leave the hospital, I also know my challenges are just beginning. Every day I wake up I’ll have a battle in front of me.

Like everyone, I am grieving. I miss him so much. Sometimes I can’t sleep because my heart feels like it’s physically going to rupture inside my chest. And because he risked it all to help save my life, I know I have to deal with things at the very core of me that no one else will ever understand. No one.

So Chad, how can you drag yourself out from the weight of self-condemnation? How can you ever live a normal life again?

One of the surgeons here at the hospital came by my room one day and saw that I was under the weight of it all. With tears in his own eyes he stared straight at me and told me something that will stay with me forever.

“The only reason guilt exists is to internally motivate us to change our behavior once we’ve done something ethically or morally wrong of epic proportions. Rarely do we do something in a lifetime that calls for this response. It exists to be used 3% of the time in our lives. The other 97%, it is a misdirected feeling that demoralizes and crushes your soul.”

Switch gears for a second. If you knew Ryan at all or if you have learned anything about his life in recent days, you know Ryan had an incredible passion for family, faith – life. As evidenced through any newswire or social media channel, the world is still feeling the ripples of that passion.

Ryan’s entire life message is about living selflessly and positively. I mean, even his blood type was B POSITIVE. To him, time was a precious gift that he took full advantage of. So when I think about Ryan’s last words to me being “I believe in you”, I take that as a personal call.

He believes in me why? To do what? I can tell you this much. It didn’t mean I should waste time – which he treasured every minute of and sacrificed his own to give me more of – on feeling guilty. That would dishonor his very life and what he stood for.

That’s not to say I won’t have my moments. I’ve already had plenty of them. But me and that gorilla are in an all out brawl – and in the end – that oversized monkey is going down.