Dear Laura,
I remember when you first came to church, about three years ago. Your Mary Jane shoes and kitten sweatshirt made me smile. At first your tics took me by surprise, when you threw your hands around (I know now that you call it “twiddling”) or burst out with sudden squeals. It really helped when you explained that you have Tourette Syndrome. Over time you shared how your medication had ruined your kidneys, meaning dialysis three times a week. As you showed me the huge welts it left in your arms, I could see why you dreaded it.
I confess that when we first met, I wasn’t sure how to help you. The way you talked was so troubling to me. I didn’t understand that Tourette often brings anxiety, depression, and obsessive thinking. I didn’t know what to do when you said things like, “Why did GOD make me and why he will not take me home? Why do so many people hate me so!” In the beginning, I thought I could talk you out of it.
All the things that usually help didn’t work—I had listened, I had prayed. I didn’t seem to make any difference. It made me feel bad at my job.
I confess that after a few attempts to “fix” you, I felt inadequate. All the things that usually help didn’t work—I had listened, I had prayed. I didn’t seem to make any difference. It made me feel bad at my job. But God was using it to teach me a wonderful lesson.
The lesson began on that day, do you remember? You started talking in the way you always had, apologizing for your existence, asking God to take your life. I was on my way to wash the cups that had piled up after service and said, “Laura, come wash dishes with me!” If I’m honest, it was partly because I didn’t know what else to say. But I learned something amazing that day. As we stood there, up to our elbows in sudsy water, for the first time, I saw you smile. I learned how your smile can warm my heart. And then you broke into singing, “Whistle While You Work.” (I’ve since learned you know the lyrics to every Broadway show and every Disney movie ever made.)
That day I saw that I’d been trying to serve you but had never really invited you to serve with me. There’s the kind of hospitality that a restaurant offers and then there’s kind that invites you into the kitchen and hands you a dishtowel. I’d tried to serve you but you wanted a family. So we began to invite you to just be with us, to serve with us.
We know now that you get self-conscious when you “twiddle” in church and that holding your hand helps calm it.
We know now that you feel the pain of others and have a gift for prayer.
We know now that you always carry a small album with you with photos of all your friends (you have so many!). We know now that you’re a birthday savant and you love writing cards to everyone in the church.
We know now that you love your cat, Randall, and have a serious crush on Davy Jones of the Monkees. We know that if we ever want to make you smile, we just need to mention one of their names. (You’re smiling as you read this, aren’t you?)
I know now that you share my childhood love for Wonder Woman and that you created a “tic” based on the way she warded off bullets with her bracelets. When I see you doing it, I know you’re warding off the voices that are more destructive than bullets, and I pray that those voices will leave you alone. I love that you wear the Wonder Woman cuffs I got you. I think I notice a little extra strength in you those days.
We know now that Summer is really hard for you, as other folks get married and travel. We know you worry that you’ll never find someone to love you, never have a chance to travel and live a full life.
We know now that you love making things, how much you love the box of craft supplies we got for when you hang out in our cafe through the week.
We know now that you’re poet and that you’re brave enough to stand up at the café’s Thursday night open mic among all the hipsters and read your poems of gratitude. We know that you’re writing your own autobiography.
We know now you’re a musician (it blesses me to hear you singing in the sanctuary when you think no one is around) and we can’t wait for you to sing on your birthday. We know you’re practicing your favorite Amy Grant song and that the lyrics are a love song to the church:
“All that I come from,
And all that I live for,
And all that I'm going to be.
My precious family
Is more than an heirloom to me.”
We know now that you are gifted and you are a gift.
I realize now that when I first met you I was confronted with my own weakness and limitation. As much as I’d like to, I can’t “fix” you. When pastors can’t fix folks, it makes them feel small and dumb. It makes them want to hide. But you seemed to be used to things that can’t be fixed. So being with you has taught me how to be okay with my limitations. And how to trust God. In all your pain, you’ve never questioned God’s existence. You’re teaching me how to trust God with big things, a little bit at a time.
I remember the time I visited you in the Psych ward. As I prayed for you, I felt God daring me to pray that you would be healed. Praying that way felt like crawling out on the very tip of a long branch and reaching, reaching, out into nothingness. But I kept praying, praying, for God to give you a healed body, a healed mind and a healed heart. My stomach lurched with fear of falling as I reached out even further. But as I peered out into what seemed like nothingness, I saw the fog clear and there, not so far away, was God, in a tree just like mine, reaching right back.
I remember the time, last month, when someone read James 5 in church. The words “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them” brought to mind your face and I knew we should do it. It felt like more leaning out on spindly branches. But we set a date and bought some anointing oil and called the elders. As more and more people heard about it, more and more came. So last Sunday you came for healing prayer along with 12 others and dozens gathered to pray and weep and hope. It seemed right that you were there in the center of it all because you are the one who has taught me to pray like this. We all leaned out on that branch together, trusting that He was leaning back towards us, longing with us. We weren’t begging an uncaring, distracted God to act, we were calling out from confidence that He cares even more than we do. We weren’t just saying, “We trust you to do what we want” we were saying “We just trust you.”
One of my favorite writers, Barbara Brown Taylor, distinguishes between pain and suffering. Using Job as an example, she says, “His pain is like being pierced by poisonous arrows. . . [But] Job’s suffering surpasses it, as he asks God to explain what has happened to him and receives no answer.” When I read this, I thought of you. You have many kinds of physical pain but the thing that often seems hardest for you is the suffering that goes with it, the anguish, wondering “Why me?” and “Does God even care?” It seems the loneliness that pain brings is worse than the actual pain.
And so, to look at you it wouldn’t seem that you are suddenly cured. But I see healing emerging. I see you smiling today, I hear you telling me about what it was like to help the kids paint pumpkins last night and I hope it means your suffering is being healed. I hope you’re seeing how you belong.
I pray you see the healing God is doing in you. I pray you see the healing God is doing in me.
(This letter, written to Laura by her pastor, is published with her permission.)
Mandy Smith is lead pastor at University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.
