The Inky Dark Garden

Walking into the hospital today I passed a few bushes sprouting green buds and a cluster of daffodils and I just had to marvel over God. This plunge into the deep started right before Thanksgiving, when winter was just getting ready to settle in. Coats and gloves and boots and car rides to and from the hospital and radiation and snow mark so many of those first memories. Christmas songs and decor intersecting with blinking lights in hospital rooms and vital signs on screens, so much felt like a choice and disparate with the season of our lives, the mustering up of hope for our own Advent, seeing the flesh of Jesus in a baby, destined to suffer even from birth. January and February speeding on wings of treatment and piled up hospital visits and IVs. And then, the amazing and inevitable happens. Every year. Just when I think winter might actually be here to stay, spring sends out its unstoppable shoots. Cade's scan results came in the day before Spring started. Let's pause and marvel over that. The day winter ended.

And now, so early it seems like this year, (but I think I really needed an Easter right now) it's Maundy Thursday. We got in the car this morning and I told the girls, "This is the day Jesus taught His disciples about communion." I said it earlier, but we've been taking communion a lot in our house. Cade did spend a few weeks referencing the blood of God, and we had to try and explain the blood of Jesus covering us, but even I still don't fully understand communion so I'm okay with Cade working out his own theology with the Holy Spirit now and later on. Jesus shared communion with 12 men who also did not fully "get" it. That in hours, his body would be broken, and his blood poured out on parched, unthankful earth.

But then as we kept driving I realized this is also the night Jesus was thrust into His own dark night in Gethsemane. One of the kids Bibles we have describes the scene in the garden as "inky dark", and I love that. I am amazed at how the past few months have changed my view of Jesus so radically. Not changed my theology of Jesus, although I think on some level that has shifted. But He has put on flesh in a new way for me. The suffering of Jesus was real. The emotions he felt tonight were real, and so distressing and difficult He actually sweat blood. I have found my heart all day thinking of Him, of how He anticipated this night. I am so glad I did not know what we would find out the November day, I can't imagine knowing it was coming and just waiting for it to arrive. Jesus knew His whole life what was ahead.

At one point in this journey I was trying to be so brave, I was trying so hard to not complain- and I felt the Heavenly Father so kindly say, "Charis, don't try to be more holy than Jesus." That's weird. What did He mean? But then I felt like He took me right to the garden, where Jesus was pleading for another way. Permission came in that very moment for me to say, "God, this is so painful. If there is a way out, please let us take it. If I can have life some other way, please do it." Essentially I was asking, "Let this cup pass from me."

Various times I've wondered why some of my prayers feel like they hit the ceiling. I hate that phrase and I've always doubted people who have said it, but now I know. I know how hollow it can "feel"- not be- as in I know God actually does hear and each prayer of mine becomes incense around His throne like Revelation says- but it can feel otherwise. I am so glad truth is not a feeling. I know how sometimes when the thing you pray for doesn't come about, it's easy to feel abandoned. I am encouraged to know Jesus also knows that feeling. Isn't that bizarre?

Jesus asked for it to pass, to have some other way of winning back the souls of mankind instead of the Cross. But the Father knew there was only one way. Just one. Wow. The friendship of Jesus to me in those moments is that He knows even what it feels like to have the Father choose the cup you'd rather not drink from.

I love how Melissa Helser says that on the Cross, Jesus swallowed up loneliness forever. In that one awful moment, Jesus cries out, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani?" My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? I have thought of that moment so many times the past few months and taken courage- Jesus tasted the blackness of the Father actually turning away from Him, so that you and I would NEVER have to know that feeling. The Father will never forsake us.

"I will make the darkness before them light, and the crooked places straight. These are the things that I do, I do not forsake them."

Chad asked God for a verse for this week while we've been inpatient and he immediately heard Hebrews 12:2. When he turned there, this is what he read:

"And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 

 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. 

For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame,

 and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, 

so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

Jesus is the pioneer of our faith. What an incredible idea. When He led his disciples, with a hymn on their lips, into the Garden, He was showing them how to endure. He was showing them how to survive, how to make it to the end. He was demonstrating for us how to talk with the Father when life presses all around, with honesty, and vulnerability, and with an amazing willingness to accept His decision. 

When He asked them to stay and watch, they each fell asleep- and worse yet, left Him in His hour of need. I cannot imagine His tremendous loneliness. What a brave Savior we have. 

But I love that Jesus didn't just have a Thursday and a Friday and a million years of Saturdays. He actually died with purpose. He died with full intention of joy ahead. He died like that verse says, "for the joy set before Him." If Jesus can be motivated to endure because of joy on the other side, and He is the pioneer of faith- than all of us can be motivated by joy too. 

I have fastened my grip onto hope that this will not always be our reality, because Jesus promises something on the other side of every trial. Like Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:17

 "our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory," 

and Romans 8, "I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us."

There is not a single situation any of us could face where His nearness could not suffice. Even in the most painful lows of this time, eternity with Him has been the hope. The lifeline. Jesus never fails us. 

I love Easter and always have, but this year, I am amazed at how this day, and tomorrow, have resounded in my heart. Suffering Servant, absorbing all the pain, choosing to accept the bitterest cup. I am so thankful. I want to "consider Him who endured such opposition", so I will not grow weary and lose heart.