And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second, that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it – Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
I used to think that inhaling was the most important part of swimming. I thought that the reason I would quickly fatigue or get muscle cramps was because I wasn’t taking in enough oxygen. And while the amount of oxygen was the problem, focusing on inhaling was not the solution. The key to swimming is the exhale. It is just simple physics. A full emptying of your lungs creates a natural vacuum which then makes inhaling almost effortless. The more you exhale, the more you can inhale. However, the opposite is also true—the less you exhale, the less you can inhale. When that happens, carbon dioxide builds in your system and your body will panic. Every moment of every day is this delicate dance between exhaling and inhaling – each one unable to exist without the other. And yet we are hard-wired to not notice our breathing. It’s only in the pool that I become aware of it.
It’s funny the places where you go when you are desperate. The pool has always been a safe place for me, a thin place. The past few years swimming has become a contemplative practice. Water physically holds you, and it serves to remind me that I am cradled and kept by God, like Julian’s hazelnut.
I came to the water today because the burden of my endometriosis felt heavy.
The pool was cold.
I allowed the water to wrap its icy fingers around my torso and instinctually sucked in air and held my breath.
It’s hard to breathe in cold water. Once I got over the initial shock, I remembered what I know to be true about swimming and forced a long, slow, and full exhale before inhaling.
I placed my feet on the swimming pool wall, pushed off, and plunged my head under the water. On days like today, when the water is cold, I have to focus on my exhale—pushing out all the carbon dioxide so that I can bring in God’s ruach. I learned the word ruach years ago in an Old Testament class. The significance of it was lost on me until I had anemia. Ruach is the word for God’s breath but it is also the word for what we breathe and what animates the world. Ruach fills our lungs at our first cry and returns to God with our last exhale. As God empties out his lungs, we inhale his ruach and live. As we exhale, he inhales and returns his life-giving breath to us once more. You and I live on everything that comes from the mouth of God.
If you ever want to experience the weight of God, I recommend getting a chronic illness. It is there that you will encounter just how powerless you are to manipulate or charm God into doing what you want. No manner of pleading, devotion, piety, or eloquence could convince God to heal me, on my timeline.
What I really wanted, what I was desperate for, was an instant healing or a silver bullet. I wasted hours scouring the internet, looking for answers because the last thing I wanted to do was suffer. I believed suffering could be avoided, and I was going to do anything I could to make it so. But this is not a promise that the living God has ever made to humanity, and it is certainly not the life that Christ lived in the flesh.
It can be embarrassing to be both a follower of Jesus and chronically ill. People inevitably ask, “But…have you asked God to heal you?” as if I hadn’t considered it. That question always stung because of course I had prayed. Yet, here I was—still sick.
I never knew what to say. Should I answer them honestly and let them into my confusing reality that I had asked and God had said “No”? Did we both need to be crushed under his immovability? Or should I feign faithlessness and say I hadn’t thought to pray about it.
I think what people don’t understand is that when you live for years with an illness, every breath is a prayer. Whether it be for complete healing or just the strength to endure that very moment. You pray for the grace to breathe through the pain until it stops, or the grit to stand up and care for your child though you have no strength to do it. I was praying, I had had others lay their hands on me and pray, but I was only getting worse.
Before getting sick, my expectation was that God would swoop in and miraculously heal me. But he didn’t and I hated it. I felt so abandoned. In a world that believes the sign of a blessed life is the absence of suffering, what did that mean about mine? Was I not beloved enough? Did God not care about me, my husband, or my young children? Had my parents sinned or had I?
Julian of Norwich asked God the same question. In her lifetime, the Black Death would kill three out of every four people in her town. It’s hard to comprehend what that must have been like.
The local churches were preaching that the plague was God’s wrath because of their sin. The church walls were covered in terrifying images of demons, torture, and hell. However, the Franciscans were preaching God’s love. Julian wanted to know who was right. Was God punishing them? Did God love them at all?
In response, God gave Julian her first showing—a vision of him, on the cross, suffering and bleeding without ceasing. At first, it is a rather off-putting response. How could the answer to the question of suffering be more suffering?
Under the frigid water, everything in my body tightened. The exhale was so hard, so effortful. I squeezed my lungs with all my might until there was nothing left. There, at the end of myself, I realized that the truth of God’s kenotic love was embedded in my lungs. I had spent so much time pushing up against the weight of God’s “no,” but all along I was exhaling – living out the reality that Jesus never says “no” because he has given us himself. With every breath, thousands and thousands of times a day, my body was declaring the gospel—that God loved me by emptying himself fully and completely so that I could live. Everything is yes and amen in Jesus.
I have never been more thankful for cold water.