LAURA PATTERSON | GUEST

I awoke that Friday morning in May to the same white walls and sterile smell for the twenty-second day in a row. The same dingy blinds covered the same window. The birthday cards I’d received the week prior were still taped up on the mirror on the far wall. The now familiar white blanket engulfed my legs and torso. The sense of familiarity I’d come to find in my surroundings was suddenly arrested that morning as feelings of shock, dread, and numbness flooded my body and left me wondering if I was truly awake.

I’d just given birth during the wee hours of the morning and, after being returned to my antepartum room without my baby, I had somehow managed to sleep for an hour or two. Doctors, nurses, and a lactation consultant visited me in my haze, and I eventually got the news that I could go meet my child. My nurse assisted me into a wheelchair, and I took the longest ride of my life to the adjoining children’s hospital.

I knew I was headed to meet my baby in the neonatal intensive care unit, but no amount of exposure or information could have prepared me for the shock of meeting my two-and-a-half-pound infant covered in tubes, lines, and bruises.

The well-intentioned nurse assigned to my son that day noticed my tears, came to the bedside, and said gently, “it’s ok, mom.”

“NO, IT’S NOT!” I yelled deep within my soul.

From Demanding to Entrusting

My internal cry that morning was full of truth. My baby was not ‘ok’. The neonatologist sat my husband and I down in a private room only hours later  to help us understand that we should expect our son to die within a couple of days’ time. I felt the very visceral reality of life in a sin-sick, disease-laden, death-cursed world.

Crying, ‘It’s not ok!’ wasn’t wrong.

But it was incomplete.

I rightly felt the painful reality that we no longer live in the Garden of Eden. But my cry would only find completion by looking ahead to another garden.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said to his inner circle of disciples, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Mt. 26:38). Jesus, preparing to drink the cup of God’s wrath, then moved on alone and pleaded in prayer, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Mt. 26:39).

But that was not the end of Jesus’ cry.

Rather than digging in his heels and demanding an ‘Edenic’ life, Jesus committed Himself to the eternal plan of His Father. What does it look like, then, for us to follow Jesus and put on ‘Gethsemane Glasses’? How do we correct the fallen, nearsighted vision that has blurred our eyes since the fall in the Garden of Eden?

Looking through ‘Gethsemane Glasses’ gives us a clear vision for acknowledging our desire for an ‘Edenic’ life now, and then entrusting our lives to the wise will of our Sovereign Father.

“It’s not ok” and ‘it is ok’ are both important cries. But the order matters.

It’s not ‘ok’

The gospel writers all describe Jesus’ agony on a dark night in Gethsemane. Luke says vividly, “And being in agony [Jesus] prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Lk. 22:44). Jesus prayed repeatedly that the Father would “take this cup from me” (Lk. 22:42).

Jesus did not deny reality. Rather, inner turmoil led him to pray more earnestly! He had nearby disciples to whom he could have vented his emotions and elicited pity. And yet, he intentionally moved forward into solitude to pray his emotions.

To deny our feelings is nothing other than self-deception. And if we stuff down the anger and grief or any other emotion we might feel, then we have no path through which to learn what it means to entrust our souls to God. We cannot learn to wear ‘Gethsemane Glasses’ if we pretend to live in the Garden of Eden.

We must not pretend to be pain-free. But we would also be wise to guard against inappropriately parading our emotions. In society today, the value given to ‘authenticity’ can quickly lead to sharing deep pain publicly and, at times, recklessly and for personal gain.  This doesn’t mean we hide our pain from the covenant community around us, but we should go to God first and let wisdom and discernment guide our public display of emotions.

In Christ we see the righteousness of rightly expressed emotions.

It is ‘ok’

Jesus shows us in Gethsemane what it looks like to pour out our hearts to God in prayer. But He shows us the incompleteness of only expressing agony to God. Of only saying “it’s not ok”.

Jesus, after asking the Father to “remove this cup from me” says, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

God wants our cries, but He is chiefly committed to the realignment of our hearts.  ‘Gethsemane Glasses’ are a gracious gift that protects us from bitterness, vengeance, envy, and discontentment. God wants to realign our hearts to His will—not to imprison us, but to free us! Like a good pair of glasses free us from a life of blurred vision, Gethsemane glasses free us from a life of bitter nearsightedness.

Strength for Today

I confess to you that I am strong-willed. But strength is not found in exerting my strong will; strength is found in submission to my Savior—in  realigning my puny plans and boring imagination to His perfect, incomprehensible path for life (Eph 3:21). When we find ourselves kicking and screaming, throwing a tantrum at the will of God, might we remember this: It’s NOT ‘ok’, and that’s the point. We weren’t made for this world. And we cannot muster the strength in ourselves to be ‘ok’ with God’s will.

It’s the Spirit in us that enables and empowers us to say, ‘not my will, but yours be done’. Back in that ICU I couldn’t pray “Your will be done.”  But I groaned. And it was in and through those Spirit-led groans that God completed my incomplete cry. He interceded for His will on my behalf (Rom. 8:26-27).

Sister, the realignment of your heart to pray according to the will of God is a work of the Spirit of Christ in you. Your flesh is weak, but He is strong. Let His strength empower you not just to a begrudging acceptance of the will of the Father, but to joy and peace.

Is it ‘ok’, or isn’t it? Yes. We live in a post-Edenic, fallen world. But an existence that will surpass the peace of Eden is coming. Every painful contraction we feel is pushing us closer to glory (Rom. 8:22-23). Wait for it. And until faith becomes sight, let’s keep wearing those ‘Gethsemane Glasses.’

Photo by Ari He on Unsplash