When I was younger, I promised myself that I would never sit around and bore people about my increasing aches and pains. Now that I am older, I am naturally more empathetic to my age-set’s varying degrees of ills. Not that I make evidence of my own physical decline a subject for conversation, but ailments, aches and pains are part of the way our bodies remind us that there is an eventual life terminus in the offing. Such as this is, I am learning that ailments are a useful gift for the elderly (and for those of any age, actually) as a prod to intercede for the suffering church worldwide. How can this be?

I confess that it is all too easy for me to forget to pray for those who are struggling physically. I confess that I am often negligent in my intercession for those who are ill.

So at the risk of breaking my own vow not to bore others with discussions of personal physical ailments, let me nevertheless share about the wrestling match I had with my digestive system one whole night (and the rest of that week) and the lesson I learned about interceding for the sick from that unpleasant marathon event.

Years ago, on vacation with my husband, I ended up in the Emergency Room of a little town in Tennessee. I thought I was having a heart attack—the pain was so severe—but instead, after an EKG and a CAT-scan (Computerized Axial Tomography), the ER doctor announced there was nothing wrong with my heart, but it appeared that I had a hiatal hernia.

He didn’t flap his hands about it but suggested that the intrusion of part of my stomach through the diaphragm might be a condition that I would need to monitor. It appears that instead of having a heart attack, I was suffering from the late dinner we had enjoyed (rather too much country fried chicken). I learned my lesson, have avoided deep fried foods of any kind in the 20 years since this incident, researched the topic and have basically controlled the impact of the hernia by eating smaller portions, avoiding late-night meals, and finishing eating before my stomach had filled. Though over-the-counter medication for stomach ailments are seemingly endless in their variety (a recent shopping trip to Wal-Mart revealed a whole aisle of beautifully designed boxes dedicated to the cause of relieving stomach pain and intestinal discomfort), our medicine cabinet held a 20-year old bottle of Milk of Magnesia and a comparatively aging box of laxatives. The need for management of stomach issues has, obviously, been few and far between.

Every once in a while, if I experienced some discomfort, a feeling of being too full after eating, I learned if I paced in the house some, waiting for an hour or so for the food to pass through the digestive track, again making mental reminders all the while to 1.) Not eat too much at night, and 2.) To not eat after 5 o’clock or thereabouts at all, my hiatal hernia condition and I would get along just fine.

Every once in a while, a random X-ray would evoke a medical response: “You’ve got quite a large hiatal hernia!” This happened when I tripped over the open dishwasher door in my kitchen, fell headfirst against a cabinet, dislocated my right shoulder and consequently was scheduled for corrective arthroscopic surgery. Perhaps I was more concentrated on the ER doctor’s exclamation, “You mean you hauled yourself off the floor and up the stairs with a dislocated shoulder to get your husband to drive you to the hospital? What a woman!” Consequently, patting myself on the back in agreement with the doctor’s evaluation (he had to call in another doctor to help him reset my shoulder—a little tug-of-war going on there), I didn’t pay too much attention to the “large hiatal hernia” remark.

However, my relationship with my hiatal hernia changed drastically last month when, after a regular checkup, my general physician referred me to a gastroenterologist. This, ostensibly, was for the purpose of scheduling a routine colonoscopy. I personally think when one has survived decades and reached one’s 70s, one should not have to worry any longer about such diagnostic interventions.

I mentioned to the gastroenterologist that I had a hiatal hernia, and that it had never been examined. This led to an endoscopy, which led to an appointment with a referred surgeon, who professionally informed me that my hiatal hernia was actually a rather large paraesophageal hernia. A paraesophageal hernia could torque= and cut off the blood supply to the stomach, which would lead to the loss of that essential organ. Now there was some quiet, but professional, hand-flapping—why hadn’t anyone take notice of this before?

So back to the medical diagnostic unit of our nearby local hospital early one Monday morning, this time for a comprehensive blood draw panel and for a series of CAT-scans (“CT CHEST ABDOMEN PELVIS W CONTRAST Oral & IV,” reads the order I brought home from the surgeon’s office). These would give more accurate photos of the size, position and twist of what appeared to be a serious intrusive condition. A date was set for surgery as well as an appointment for another pre-op exam.

On Friday night of the same week, we invited new friends from the inner-city church we have been attending to our house for dinner. This was an African American couple; she is the administrator of a Meals-on-Wheels program (food delivered to the elderly) and he, an ordained minister, is highly involved in bringing churches together across the city of Chicago in activist movements that hold government officials accountable to social concerns they might not attend to if these grassroots organizations, all faith-based, did not participate in regular peaceful protests. I served broiled salmon and roasted vegetables. The conversation was stimulating. We had a lovely evening.

By 10 o’clock when our new friends left to drive back into the city, I was picking up signals that all was not well on the intestinal front; a war was beginning to wage in my digestive tract. By 4 o’clock, after six hours of moaning and groaning and huffing and puffing, with a stomach in turmoil, pain now shooting down my left arm, my husband and I agreed this was nothing to ignore.

He dropped me off at the ER in order to park the car, and I made sure the admitting desk knew I was concerned about a heart attack happening at the moment, or about a paraesophageal hernia having become fully torqued. Fortunately, with digital records, the ER team could pull up my Monday CAT-scans and compare those photos to the ones now being taken in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Although my stomach was two times as large as it had been earlier in the week, there was no torqueing of the hernia. A shot of morphine calmed my digestive system. Blood draws indicated all was well on the hematology front. EKG monitors assured us that my heart was not at risk.

After three hours, having sent David home to sleep once we knew there was no immediate danger, and after the morning ER shift change, I talked my way out of an imminent hospital room assignment, and using my Lyft APP, was able to schedule a driver to take me home. There was no need to wake David again. My husband gets nervous in hospitals; continued sleep would help him slough off the stress of our ER adventure.

Nevertheless, the whole next week was devoted to the management of pain-filled symptoms. I learned that the operative direction was “soft foods”—a phrase thrown out by my surgeon during the conversation before I had my CAT-scan exams, before the ER episode and before my following week at home learning how to persuade a suddenly dysfunctional digestive system back into some kind of normalcy. I began to search the refrigerator and cupboards for edibles that would not challenge my already threatened upper stomach and lower abdomen. Something soft. Soft food. Soft.

The second sleepless night after returning myself home from the ER, I began to appreciate the fact that abdominal mishaps must involve a huge percentage of the American population: How many of my fellow citizens were lying in bed, attempting to sleep, suffering from the pangs of digestive misfortune? I ceased to wonder at the row of highly designed stomach-aid boxes at Wal-Mart. They all were witness, this long wall of products, to a huge demand for over-the-counter treatments for this sour discomfort.

It was at this point, lying in my bed, not able even to toss and turn, my husband sleeping by my side, that a random thought whispered, What if this becomes a permanent physical condition for me? What if, for the rest of my life, I’m going to have pain and distress after eating even minimal amounts of food? (That day all I had was one banana, one bowl of yogurt, mugs of ginger tea, one piece of toast).

Pain Taught Me A Lesson

I decided that I would use the pain of that night (and the next three) to intercede for the sick in the world, for those who suffer perhaps without medical remedies. My pain was physical, real to me, but working itself out in a system where I had excellent medical care available and nearby, where I had a warm home to return to on a snowy morning, where a loving husband attended to me with concern and care, where we were safe from foragers and violence and evil men and from warmongers and rapists and land-grabbers. Here, in this sanctuary that is my life, which it is so easy to take for granted, I could use my computer to educate myself about hernias, stomach distresses, home remedy treatments and diets. I could even read up on the surgical procedure for giant paraesophageal hernias (aparoscopic Nissen fundoplication, for anyone else who might want to know). The least I could do was use my distress as a reminder of the distresses of others.

I have a prayer exercise I’ve learned to use through the years—particularly during those nighttime hours when I cannot sleep—being a light sleeper, they have been many. This approach is a form of wordless prayer in which I remind myself of all the intercessors worldwide and of that great cloud of witnesses in the heavens that the book of Hebrews speaks of, which sustain and support and undergird our planet. “I urge, then, first of all” writes Paul in 1 Timothy 2:1–2, “that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone.”(NIV)

At night, in the quiet, without the rush of daytime activity, I mentally make myself available to join Christ who intercedes at the right hand of God, (“. . . since he [Christ] always lives to make intercession for them.” —Hebrews 7:25) Without words, but with a heart full of concern and love, eyes closed, body prone, I wait and almost always a prayer mantle of intercession comes over me (given how frail our attempts at words are to explain profound spiritual experience, this is the best that I can describe this practice). I feel as though I am entering that intercessory circle—that place where Christ holds to heart, eternally and without interruption, every little starving child, every woman filled with terror, every man courageously standing before accusers for his faith, every farmer bemoaning a failing harvest, every saint boldly taking the message of the Gospel where it has not before been heard, every parent holding a feverish infant and standing outside a village clinic in a long and snaking line.

And so, during this week of gastric distresses, asking myself what I would do if this were to become a lifetime disability, I decided I would use the nighttime moments of duress to pray, to pray for those who suffer, to pray for my Christian brothers and sisters worldwide who are sick. Prayers of intercession for others, I am learning, offered up when my own physical pain is present, impresses a reality upon me that does not happen when I am praying without pain.

Two nights ago I slept soundly without any stomach suffering. Today I am feeling stronger. Perhaps I’ve had gastritis, an infection of the stomach that has nothing to do with my hiatal hernia. I’m only slightly aware by checking sounds emitting from my abdomen that I’ve eaten a small breakfast of yogurt and honey, topped with bananas and cinnamon, and one slice of toast with a butter substitute spread—the most I’ve put in my stomach at one time over the last seven days.

But pain has taught me a lesson. Instead of praying for my body when it hurts, in the days ahead, I will pray for the Body, for those believers—wherever they may be in the world—who seek to follow Christ and serve God. Pain, along with discomfort, can bring us gifts if we so choose to allow it. Our own ills can sensitize us to the ills of others. The disease of a loved one demands our prayers. Concern and compassion, fearfulness and anxiety can cause us to spend hours on our knees and to hardly forget for a moment that the one we love is ill. Can we learn to remind ourselves that physical disease is also an opportunity to pray for those with similar struggles who have no one to pray for them? Prayers for those whom we know are sick are often used beyond our knowing for those we don’t know.

“And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” —Ephesians 6:18 (NIV)

When we pray for those who are ill, we, like the people in the New Testament, are bringing them to Jesus. He casts out disorders for those who were possessed of demons; He healed all who were sick that were brought to Him (see Matthew 8:16). Let us use our own illnesses to remind us to intercede for those who are also ill—the ones we know and the ones we don’t know.

This morning, while writing this, I found an old note tablet and scanned the notes on the pages to see if there was anything I needed to retain. I had written out this prayer sometime in the past without knowing I would need it for this blog:

Through our fragmentary prayers

And our silent heart-hid sighs,

Wordlessly, the Spirit bears

Our profoundest needs and cries.

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Almost every year for the last 14 years, I have offered a 24-hour Advent retreat of silence during the first week of December. Advent, on the liturgical calendar, is the beginning of the church year that follows the life of Christ for 12 months. This retreat felt like a perfect way to begin centering the minds of Christ-followers and provide a decent antidote, if taken, to protect against the consumerism, the commercialism and the secularism of the world that surrounds us. It’s easy to be sucked into all that, if we’re not careful.

For me, the Advent retreat is always a gift of love. I generally come home after it ends, physically blasted from hauling and designing and interacting. Nothing in my home speaks of Christmas, and often, by early December here in Chicago, some early snow and dropping temperatures mean that the barrel by the mailbox, which I always decorate, including some message for passersby, will be frozen. This fall, corn shocks and wild grasses, dried allium heads and pumpkins and gourds and three signs proclaiming “Count Your Blessings” and “Give Thanks” adorned the barrel beneath the postal box. As I anticipated, two snowfalls have come this year, and the weather is 10 degrees outside. Everything is frozen, and I will have to carry buckets of boiling water across the street in order to dislodge the now rather sad-looking arrangement.

This year, we held four (four!—what were we thinking?) 8-hour Advent retreats of silence in the 1920s restored barn-house of my daughter and son-in-law, Melissa and Doug Timberlake. Something about this place embraces people. It has been beautifully decorated with garage-sale finds. The high lofts (which are great for people to tuck into and to go deeply into silence) lift the eyes. There are all kinds of nooks and crannies where people can sit and be still, where they can follow the guided instructions we work hard to create, where they can pray and listen in the silence.

However, it takes about a month to hang Christmas decorations in this huge place. Since we are not going to a retreat center with paid staff—crews that set up and tear down and clean up after the retreatants leave—we are the ones on whom all this work lands (and more so, on my daughter, Melissa, and her family, since this is their home).

For our recent retreats, treats needed to be prepared and arranged on two coffee-and-tea bars, and a hot-chocolate center in the basement needed to be readied with homemade cookies (everything gluten-free due to guests’ dietary constraints), carafes to hold hot milk, and various kinds of powered chocolate to make the drinks.

The barn needed to be cleaned, stalls mucked—one horse and three sheep and a stall full of chickens all contributing to the task. Due to guests’ allergies, cats were stored in a room in the basement, and two Great Danes and an aging shih tzu named Supreme were temporarily kenneled at our home, some 50 minutes away, while two young-adult Timberlake grandchildren supervised this arrangement for the four days, two Thursdays and two Saturdays early in December.

Why go to all this trouble? (May I also mention that the fees for the retreat just barely covered the expenses.) It is worth the effort and the resulting fatigue when, as a retreat leader, you feel that movement of silence settle on the house and on those who are inhabiting it for eight hours, when people ooh-and-ahh about being quiet with so much surrounding beauty, when tears come due to the persuasion of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Scriptures and the chosen theme, and the reality settles in that we have so little time to simply be because of the cacophony and hurriedness of our modern living.

I went home after the first two retreats, sent the dogs back for four days before they returned again before the second stage of retreats, fought off a cold, slept for nine hours one night and took naps during the days but still felt that warm glow, which some have designated “helper’s high,” that I have felt after every Advent retreat I’ve ever offered. We may be tired from the effort, weary to the bone, but knowing that people have met with God, have heard Him speak, have faced some of their own personal dilemmas with a little more honesty due to the opportunity of uninterrupted self-reflection—that makes it all worth the time and energy and expense.

An interesting thing happened this year (perhaps it happens every year and I just noticed it more this year): I personally was deeply impacted by the Advent theme Melissa and I chose and our husbands, Doug and David, helped us develop. The theme was “Taking the High Road: The Courage to Choose Goodness in a Challenging World.” We had the opportunity to meditate on the meaning of goodness through August, September, October and November. David and I realized that we, in all our 57 years of marriage, had never heard a sermon series on the topic of what it means to be good or to serve a good God.

Our guided retreat program included quotes from religious thinkers. This one from Billy Graham struck me: “Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness.” I deeply agree. And I have thought about this through these months.

The morning time of quiet began with a series of questions that encouraged an hour and a half of self-reflection. The theme Scripture started us: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers” (Galatians 6:9–10, niv). Two pages of scriptures with the concept of good or goodness were provided for all to examine. We asked the retreatants to look back over their lives and think about the people who had impacted them with goodness and what, in particular, it was that those people had done. We provided them with two pages of synonyms for “good”: a list of adverbs (acceptability, adequately, all right, decently, nicely, satisfactorily, etc.); a list of nouns (benediction, benefit, boon, felicity, godsend, blessing, grace, mercy, favor, kindness, comfort, consolation, etc.); a list of adjectives (right, decent, ethical, honest, honorable, just, moral, righteous, straight, true, upright, virtuous, etc.). We gave them time to debrief as the group gathered together what thoughts had come to them, what the Holy Spirit might have whispered to them, what kept them from doing good, being good. We asked them to set goals to become people who thought good, spoke good and determined to be good. We gave them things to do in the afternoon—activities, but still conducted in silence.

We ate our meal in silence, together, but not talking. A small poem at each plate further focused our minds on the meaning of goodness. A handmade bookmark contained different Scripture verses, and a collage of dried leaves from Turtle Creek Acres, the name of the Timberlake barn-house with some 15 acres of protected marshland surrounding it, was an individual gift for all.

We included this intriguing poem puzzle. Read it slowly down the page, and when you are finished, read it slowly up the page.

Today is the absolute worst day ever
And don’t try to convince me that
There’s something good in everyday
Because, when you take a closer look,
This world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don’t last.
And it’s not true that
It’s all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be obtained
Only if one’s surroundings are good
It’s not true that good exists
I’m sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It’s all beyond my control
And you’ll never in a million years hear me say that
Today was a good day.

By the time of our whole eight-hour day—arriving at 9 a.m., eating at 12:30, gathering at 4:00 for our last time of group debriefing, then concluding with an ending ceremony at 4:30, and saying goodbye at 5:00—we’d all had a full day. (“All of us” includes 44 retreatants, 4 leaders, 2 marvelous helpers and 1 musician—51 in all).

And most importantly, all of us, as testified by remarks at the door, left with minds surfeited with thoughts of goodness—its meanings, its capacities to work wholeness and health and beauty and reconciliation and redemption in the world. David has been writing letters to those people from our past life who influenced us in major ways for the good. We have a stack of red envelopes, some 30 of them, self-addressed by retreat guests, waiting for stamps: This an exercise of writing out those words we believe God might say to us—an assignment to help us experience “The Goodness of a Letter from God.” We will mail these back to the authors the week before Christmas.

We played the gospel-music song “Good, Good Father.”

David and I laid hands on each person at the end of the retreat and pronounced a blessing, “This is what your good, good Father says to you: ‘You are my beloved daughter [or son], in whom I am well pleased.’” People were powerfully moved. Tears flowed. We knew many of us had met with a good and loving God.

The last Advent retreat for 2017 was three days ago. I’ve slept and done the minimal things I need to do. Not one Christmas display has been put up in my house. The dining-room table with the white bisque angels set has not been laid with the holiday dishes. The lovely nativity I picked up in Alcala, Spain, has not taken its rightful place on the sideboard. The shepherd hooks will need to be pounded into the frozen ground so that lanterns will light the Christmas Eve path leading to our front door.

Nevertheless, I am celebrating Christmas in my heart. I have a good, good Father who teaches me to be good, instructs me when I forget to do good, inspires me by the example of others who are good, who sent His Son into the world—gave this extraordinary gift—so that we would know what good looks like and become like that good. As a gift, for the last 15 years, we’ve mounted an Advent retreat of Silence. And that’s a good thing. Because of all this inner work, we are going to have a good (perhaps undecorated) Christmas.

Remarkably, when I returned home, InterVarsity Press had sent me one of their just-released books as a Christmas gift, The Magnificent Story: Uncovering a Gospel of Beauty, Goodness & Truth by James Bryan Smith. One paragraph pierced my fatigue and the temptation to crankiness that accompanies the effects of overdoing: “‘Beauty,’ said Dallas Willard, ‘is goodness made manifest to our senses.’ What is goodness?  Goodness is that which works for the benefit or betterment of another. If, as [Thomas] Aquinas said, beauty is that which, when seen, pleases, then goodness is that which, when experienced, benefits. That which is good makes us better, heals us, restores us, improves us, strengthens us, and makes us right, perhaps when we were wrong.”

All through this 2017 season of offering Advent retreats, I had been receiving text messages from a high school friend I hadn’t seen in 30 years. Traditionally, one of the satisfactory acts for me at this time of year is to provide gifts for others in real need. There is so much abundance in our lives—just living together as a loving married couple; just being privileged to serve our God in full-time ministry—that David and I don’t give gifts to each other, but we try to be aware of those around us who have little, who have had losses they still grieve and who struggle to make it through the days. However, this Advent season, I was tight financially myself and admittedly dubious about the concerns my long-ago friend was texting to me.

For years she had served as a missionary to Romania, and she returned home to the States to retire, bringing a young teenager she had adopted while in her late 60’s. Some of the young men she had once mentored in faith were now encountering dreadful circumstances, were ill and destitute, had been beaten by bullies . . . Her texts indicated how frantic she had become for them.

Finally, a royalty check came my way, and I attempted to send an electronic gift per my friend’s instructions to me. The woman at the fund transfer counter was skeptical:  Did I know these people? she asked. No, I didn’t. She actually didn’t want to wire it; there were so many scams perpetrated by overseas hoaxes, particularly at this time of year. Not only was she practically refusing to service me, but this fund transfer group would not take my check, only a debit card, which David and I do not use. I had prayed about this need and was still confused about the legitimacy of the ask. But because I had told my friend I would wire funds—the whole of my small royalty—I procured her checking account numbers, went to a bank branch and sent the money on its way.

Word came back. A hospital bill was paid; medicine to combat pneumonia was procured; wood was purchased to heat a little cottage that had been made available; and a debt to a loan shark was paid off. Then another royalty check, a surprise, came in the mail, and I forwarded it, rescuing small children who had been taken as earnest against the loan shark’s loan. (Do these things really happen in the world? Apparently they do.)  The two little children were released. I went to bed for a couple of days (or at least dragged around the house).

But—with Advent in our hearts, and charity (one of those synonyms for the word good) activated, despite not one Christmas decoration being in place outside or inside, we are already having a good, good Christmas. (“Really, really, really,” as my five-year-old granddaughter says.)  Really. He is a good, good Father.

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