Your Most Beautiful You

This past Monday we learned that Carrie’s cancer is medically incurable. At 3:00 AM the next morning, the Holy Spirit reminded me of these precious words from 2 Corinthians 4...

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, yet our inner nature is being renewed every day.

The time horizon for the decay of our outer nature is brief.  The outer nature is wasting away.  Cancer might accelerate that unavoidable process. However our inner nature is being renewed every day. And I believe that the inner nature is made more beautiful by this process of renewal. I see this every day in the steady, persistent sanctification of my beloved. So while cancer might accelerate the process of the wasting away of her outer nature, it is simultaneously hastening the perfection and beautification of her inner nature.

For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

Carrie, I have watched cancer change you. And I can say that it has changed you in the most beautiful ways. Because you have walked through this trial with humility and faith, your inner nature has been renewed -- yes, more than renewed -- day by day. The Carrie that I see and hold is only a reflection of the eternal Carrie, the Carrie who is loved by God in a beautiful, caring conversation of spirits. I can not see this inner version of you with my eyes, but I daily sense that she is growing stronger and more glorious. Your inner you, the you that is loved and cared for by God, is immutable and mysterious. Because I am also wasting away outwardly on my own timeline, I can only experience the effects of this growing eternal weight of glory in your words and disposition here in the temporal. I can not touch or see the real you. If my inner me could commune with your inner you then the process of either of us dying would be so much more a triviality for us both. 

But your inner you does commune with the Eternal. And He who makes all things new is perfecting you. And if I am still here when your outer nature has wasted away to the point that I can no longer communicate with you, when I will have no visible or audible sense of the you I love so dearly, even then, your inner you will be steadily and unstoppably becoming more beautiful.  And even though I can’t see this most beautiful you with my eyes, I am looking for her. Today, and for the remaining days we have together, however many they may be, I will continue to see the imprint of this most beautiful you. And I know that I will see her face to face one day -- one wonderful, unexplainable, unending day.  I am grateful for every day that I have with you.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 

Love Never Fails

Many of us are familiar with I Corinthians 13.  It is perhaps the most beautiful and poetic chapter of the New Testament.  It calls us to a profound and wonderful place beyond action and beyond motive.  It calls us to something that is humanly impossible.  It unfolds the mystery of God to us and opens up doors beyond comprehension.

In the middle of this chapter is an inflection point turning on the very meaning or definition of love – love never fails.  Everything to this point is a description of love, what love does or how love responds. Love is not arrogant, or resentful, or selfish.  Love rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And then…

Love never fails.

This three word phrase does not describe love, it defines love. This three word phrase became the basis of understanding God for me, not really understanding God exactly, but understanding this aspect of how God relates to me.  We are called to love, even to love those who revile us or want nothing to do with us.  And when someone you deeply care about turns away from you, you are left with two choices – to abandon that person in your heart or to continue loving them with all good-will and compassion.  At the lowest point of defeat and despair in my life, this word came to me… “love never fails”.  Go on loving and you can not fail.  Everything may crumble, this person may never speak to you again, your world may come apart at the seams, but if you persist in love toward that person deep in your heart, you will not fail.

And it all seemed so simple, like a huge burden lifted from my chest, staring up at the ceiling in the dark cold of winter. 

But that was not all. 

In fact that was only the beginning. 

Because in that moment, God revealed to me that He loves me this way.  That nothing I can ever do will overcome His love.  His love never fails, it never ends.  I can turn away from Him, revile and want nothing to do with Him, I can ignore Him.  Nothing will change Him.  He will continue to love me. He will continue to patiently long for me to return.  He will receive me again with joy at the first moment of my responding to His kindness.  He will weep over my pride and pointless wandering.  And I suddenly and for the first time had no fear of losing His love.  I realized for the first time the impossibility of God not loving me.  It changed me profoundly and permanently.

 

There is now no place I would rather be than with God.  Understanding that He will love me as a father loves his children, understanding the nature of unconditional love, draws me to Him.  And all of life and death, joy and suffering, everything has meaning and beauty in Him.
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Sunday morning I woke early and sat next to Carrie’s hospital bed.  She had just spent two nights struggling through painful back spasms that kept her largely immobile.  She was lying in bed wondering what it meant to have a cancerous tumor in her spine.  She asked me to pray.  We held hands and I prayed.  When I was finished, Carrie prayed.  The high point of her prayer was unique.  She lifted up the hospital staff, all the people coming and going from her room.  She remembered that each of them is dealing with troubles and challenges and she asked God to bless them in some way on this particular Sunday.

A man should have the good fortune to spend one day of his life in the company of a woman like Carrie.