So That What Cannot Be Shaken May Remain

“We ignore even pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
C.S. Lewis, “The Problem of Pain”

I am a terrible gardener. If one should walk upon my property, they might find the remnants of intentional landscaping, carefully maintained and designed by a loving homeowner prior. Her name was Mildred, and while the interior of her home left much to be desired as far as updates and renovations are concerned, she carefully curated sweet, simple landscaping. Easy to maintain for her, I imagine but fulfilling in bursts of color and sweetness. A rose bush, tulips, a few daffodils, hydrangeas, primrose, many others which unfortunately my untrained eye is incapable of recognizing beyond, “green” and “pretty”. I imagine her, wide-brimmed hat to head, probably tiny in stature, but posture slightly curved, gloves to hands, clad with a spade, knees to the ground, with slow and deliberate movements, lovingly treating her weed-free, and life-giving garden.

Three years into receiving Mildred’s lovingly kept garden, the flowers remain for the most part. Perhaps not quite as lush and vibrant. The rose bush, one hydrangea, azaleas, (albeit overgrown

and in dire need of a good trim) and the tulips have come and gone for this year. More than that, unfortunately blindingly so, weeds. Weeds everywhere. Particularly the prickly ones. I’ve procrastinated pulling them for the entire Spring season because they hurt, and they are in abundance. Overwhelming. Heavy in that some of the stalks are, embarrassingly so, nearly the circumference of my wrist. My garden is overrun by abundant, painful, prickly weeds which, quite frankly, I cannot stand to allow in existence another moment. Which is precisely why, after I do everything else that I need to/want to/can come up with to do today, I will start to conquer them all.

This morning as I pulled up into my driveway; silent car ride, rather the change from the bantered, cheerful resonance of children’s voices just moments before, I placed the car in park in deep thought. Death, dementia, enemy lies, heavy words and emotions looming and spindling dangerous little webs around the fibers of my mind, my attention was immediately called upon by the ankle, waist, and shoulder-high weeds, prickly and overwhelming; domineering, even that is my new garden. “Another day another failure, and honestly, I’m just too tired to deal with one more thing, I think.” (It’s only going to get worse, and more burdensome as time goes on.)

I step out of the truck, toes of my sneakers hanging a second from floor to macadam, when among the cancer that is those thistles, I see a flash of red, then purple, then pink and still yet white buds on the hydrangea.

“Faith makes a fool of what makes sense
But grace found my heart where logic ends
When justice called for all my debts
The Friend of sinners came instead
Your ways are higher
Your thoughts are wilder
Love came like madness
Poured out in blood-washed romance
It makes no sense but this is grace
And I know You're with me in this place”

- Hillsong UNITED, “Here Now”

Droplets of dew and rain glistening in the morning light, still obscured so slightly by rainclouds of the night before, a rose. A velvety red rose, bright and proud among the overwhelming invasion of weeds. I look down to find tiny purple flowers, then budding primrose, bright as the sun, once bloomed. I couldn’t believe that any of it could still manage to survive my neglect. Immediately I reach out to remove the weeds surrounding that rose, but those slivers of pain reminded me- Overrun.

What is it about the threat of pain, that ceases our growth? Its mere existence is an alarm, a warning, “something is up here. Watch that.” Even once we are willing to reach into it- the persistence of the pain, the threat of more still, it’s all consuming and overwhelming until the existence of the prickly weed overwhelms all that is good, and true, and beautiful. (Not all that we feel or fear or see is actually true.)

God created pain, knowing both that it WOULD happen, and that it would happen with regularity. After the fall, the protection never ceased but it was also conditionally removed. Women will have painful childbirth, you will make choices and the consequences will have painful results, “I have overcome it all, child, but you’re still going to have to walk.” The results on the other side are always far greater than any pain I might endure over the process of growth, but why then does it still hurt?

So we can acknowledge that it has a purpose. We can acknowledge that the pursuit of the other side, is worth the perseverance necessary to endure it. But still. But STILL. Why? And if we can acknowledge it, why can’t we be FREE of the effects of it?

Defiantly, I reach into the green, pulling at the root, birthing fresh, damp soil as I remove each stalk and cast it behind me.

“So that what cannot be shaken may remain.” Hebrews 12:27

God allows us pain to alert us to a wrong, perhaps not what is wrong, but to let us know that there is something there which must be shaken, which must be plucked at the root, and away, out of us, BEHIND us.

Pain, in essence, is the courtesy of a loving God, removing the weeds of our life, prickly, soft and supple, but a hindrance and nuisance regardless, to come what may make room for the birth and growth of that which will remain.

I’m sitting here, thinking of a way to wrap this up. I do not yet have an answer for the rest of it. I’m still wrestling. I don’t know why it still hurts. I want to say that it is part of the grand mystery that is Creation and a relationship with a loving Father, but from where I sit, to put it bluntly, that’s just an irritating thing to say to someone who is suffering. What I do know is that where there is pain there is purpose; where there is purpose there is growth; and where there is growth, there is grace sufficient for the whole lot of it. Where do acceptance and peace come in from there? We can answer the grand mystery of pain, but answers provide not emotional peace and understanding and ultimately, willingly relenting to Him.

In the end, I suppose that that is a question not to be answered this side of Heaven.