Taming The Monster (Relentless Grace Excerpt #6)

Happy Monday! I’ve decided to add a feature.

For the next few Mondays, I’ll post a series of excerpts from RELENTLESS GRACE. You can read previous excerpts here.

I hope you enjoy them, and that you’ll encounter God’s invitation to give hope another chance.

TAMING THE MONSTER (Relentless Grace Excerpt #6)

Note: This is a follow-up to last week’s excerpt. If you missed it, you can read it here.

The room became nearly dark as the door closed again, just the dim light from the hallway sneaking under the door. Silence for a few moments, but somehow a different quality permeated the room. A small bit of peace had settled in the shadows.

“Rich.” Spoken so softly I almost felt it more than heard it. “Rich, may I come in?”

Tears flooded my eyes again.

“Al,” I whispered. “Yeah, please come in.”

He crossed the room and stopped beside me. I could hear him there, and then I felt his hand on my shoulder. He stood beside me in dark silence and we stared at the blinds for a few moments. I cried and he held me awkwardly, avoiding the screws, and cradled my head as the fear and pain gushed out. The emotion of this miserable day completely overwhelmed me and the terror of the past weeks seemed to rip at my soul. I sobbed uncontrollably, but I was no longer alone.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Al asked.

So I told him about the monster in the mirror and the horrible panic, about finally understanding what I had become. How could I ever go outside the room again? How could people even tolerate such a terrifying figure? Why had no one told me about my freakish appearance?

“I can’t live like this. This cannot be what God wants anyone to be. I need to die—that thing in the mirror needs to die. That can’t be me. What happened to me? Where did I go?”

Al and I talked for a long time that evening. We spoke about the embarrassment of feeling like some strange creature that belonged in a circus sideshow rather than in my body. We talked about who—or what—I was in this lifeless skeleton of a body with the Frankenstein screws in my head. I asked the same questions again and again, “What happened to ME?”

At one point, Al went to the bathroom and came back with a hand mirror. “You need to take another look at yourself.”

I recoiled in horror. How could he possibly imagine I’d want to see that monstrous reflection again? But he persisted, gently telling me I needed to take a better look, a calmer look, I needed to see me in the mirror. After a long time and a lot of angry, fearful refusing, I agreed. Slowly, Al brought the small hand mirror up until it was in front of my face.

I closed my eyes as the reflection appeared before me, then opened them a little. I saw a hollow face with a sallow complexion. The eyes darted back and forth, brief glimpses before looking away and back again. I noticed the same scraggly beard and unkempt hair I’d seen earlier. And then I saw them—the screws and the metal halo they held in place around my head. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, and waited a few moments before I found the courage to open them again.

The halo of silver-colored metal hung suspended about half an inch away from my head. I could see two of the screws embedded in my forehead about an inch above and outside of each eyebrow.

I stared with some combination of fascination and disbelief. How had my life come to this? How could THAT be ME? Al steadied the mirror for several moments and allowed the image to hang there in front of me. Who is that? Where is me?

Al must have seen the questions on my face because he said quietly, “Rich, you’re in there.”

“Where?” I whimpered.

“Rich, you’re in there,” he repeated. “You are not what you see in the mirror. What you see right now is pain and sorrow and a catastrophic injury that’s going to need a long time to heal. You see fear and loss and grief. You see a brace that looks horrible because of the horrible job it has to do. You see all of that, and you think you’re seeing you.

“But all of that stuff isn’t you. It’s all on the outside and it’ll all go away. Even the brace—four months is an awfully long time to have such a terrible contraption attached to you, but it’ll go away. None of what you see is you. You’re in there, underneath the unimaginable things that have happened to you.”

I asked him to pray with me. Al was good about that, a pastor who loved God with all his heart but didn’t just drop “Jesus” into a situation as though that would make it all better and you never should have been sad or scared in the first place because you should just have enough faith. But now he prayed with me, and as he prayed he also reminded me I wasn’t alone. He laid the mirror down, took my paralyzed, limp hand in his hands and prayed.

“Lord Jesus, be here with us. Rich is really scared right now, Father, and he has every reason to be scared. A terrible thing has happened and Rich doesn’t even know where he is anymore. He looks in the mirror and he can’t find himself, and instead he sees a hideous, frightening reflection of Evil.

“Father, hold Rich in Your hand right now. Let him know that Your arms surround him tonight, that he’s safe, and that he has not gone anywhere. Let him know that he’s right here, and that You know all about his battles. Remind him that Jesus felt the fear, knows the pain, and understands what it means to feel lost and alone. Father, help Rich to sense the powerful presence of Jesus in this room right now through Your Spirit.

“And Father, grant to Rich Your peace in this moment. He faces a long and difficult road, but help him to know he doesn’t have to travel that road tonight. Help him to let go, to fall into Your arms, and to be at peace.

“Father, I ask this, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.”

The room that had been filled with so much turmoil all day was unexpectedly quiet, still and peaceful. This dreadful situation wasn’t suddenly all OK. But it was somehow OK in that moment. Al and I talked a while longer. He reminded me that there were no magic, easy answers to this dilemma and that I’d likely encounter frightful images again. But he asked if I could let the peace in the room settle over me, just for tonight.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “I’m really tired. I’ll be all right. Thanks.”

Al was sure right about one thing. My journey didn’t get magically easier that night. God never promised every season of life would be easy. He did promise we would never have to face any situation alone. That doesn’t make it easy—it DOES offer hope.

Hope provides a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The hope God offers isn’t the sort of wishful thinking so prevalent at birthday celebrations. “I hope I get a new bike” confuses hope with some sort of superstitious yearning. I hope my team wins the big game; I might refuse to wash my lucky jersey because I hope it’ll bring good luck. That’s not God’s hope.

God bestows through His grace the kind of hope that might be more accurately described as “expectation.” God doesn’t promise that I can wish for His peace; He promises that I can expect to receive it. God’s hope isn’t based on wishes or luck or maybe. God’s hope implies certainty rooted in grace and love.

That night I felt the power and the hope of the presence of Jesus. I knew He stood with me, walked beside me and even carried me when I needed it. The palpable tranquility that filled my hospital room that night drove away the fear of the monster in the mirror.

In a moment when I couldn’t see a way out, God provided. He didn’t solve the problem or make the pain disappear. But He did give me what I needed at that moment. He made that night, at the end of an awful day, a night of peace.

I wish I could proclaim that I never gave up again, never got frustrated or fearful, never forgot to lean on God’s promises. I wish I could say that after that night I always remembered that Jesus knew the pain and the fear and would always be with me. I wish I had been able to carry the peace of that night through the difficult days and weeks ahead.

But in fact I continued to give up and get angry and frustrated. Time and again I found myself at the end, lost and alone. No way to turn, no idea how to get out of this one.

And every time, God provided. Not an easy way, not an end to the pain. But Jesus was always with me. Somehow He helped me summon the strength to go on when I was certain I couldn’t go any farther. Every time, when I could find no escape from the fear, God provided.