me and Thomas

I've had the revelation lately that maybe Doubting Thomas gets a bad rap. I think he and I could have a slightly cynical conversation over a couple of pots of tea and both get up encouraged. See, I have an easy faith in God, I feel like I get the basics of His heart (like 1/gajillionth of His heart), that He loves us and He weeps with us and rejoices with us and so on. What I don't have a lot of faith in is how much control we have over the events in our lives, how prayer affects that, how "faith" affects that. Lots of questions there. So I kind of have a "Won't hurt to ask" policy, which anybody with big that-leg-is-gonna-grow-back-on faith would find seriously lacking.

So even during this horrible trial with R2, I was doing what the doctors said to do and asking, in my deepest heart, in the place in my heart where my first baby has his rooms and boxes, if something could change. I never expected anything to change. People around me had higher hopes, greater faith, maybe. I didn't mind that. I just had the facts and my desperate hopes.

And we've gotten some kind of miracle. I can't call it something else, the neurologist can't even call it something else. We sat in a circle in his office, the MOG and I, R2, and the neurologist, and we all laughed because it doesn't make any sense, but he is not dying, not now. He's still broken, but this threat has passed, and it seems like further recovery is underway. There is no way to know what the future holds. We're definitely more aware of his fragility than ever before. You better believe we are relishing these days.

So, how do I feel, people have been asking. I never feel like I feel appropriately. Like, I should just be ecstatic, out of my mind excited but I'm a little numb, like an observer watching a really great movie. I can tell I'm deeply relieved, that most of the weight and tension of the last 4 months has lifted, but so much of the heavy and the deep and sad has come to live with me, and so the joyful and the thankful still has that weighty undertone, there is no giddiness. I'm weighty with gladness. This has been the Narcissist Hour. Same time, same channel tomorrow.

So Thomas, in the Bible, for those of you less familiar with ol' Tom, was a disciple who wouldn't believe that Jesus was Himself, resurrected, until he could touch the crucifixion scars in Jesus' palms. I've always given Thomas a little bit of a side-eye, but now I think maybe Tom had been through quite a bit, and maybe the unpredictability and the loss just made him a little slower to catch on to the miraculous. It gives me a lot of comfort that that hesitation didn't seem to hurt Jesus' feelings at all. It gives me a lot of comfort that Jesus is really really familiar with our weakness and our humanity and He is not shaken by our unbelief, He just keeps doing what He does. It makes me feel like I can come close to Him with my questions and my fear and my immaturity and it's okay, because He likes me and He's not afraid of the work. A lot of comfort.