The Dignity of Time to Heal

We’re four weeks out. I feel silly every time I have to admit this, but I really thought the surgery was going to be the hardest part - I couldn’t stop envisioning every single step from the IV to the room full of strangers (while I’m sleeping!) to a person (also known as a surgeon) cutting me open - right through all my abs!

But I didn’t consider my recovery for very long. The day before my surgery, I had a more sobering conversation with my surgeon. She told me I’d need to take it very easy afterwards - for about six weeks (!!) That I needed to plan to really rest. My dad’s notes from our appointment read: “be a bum for six weeks.”

I appreciated the humor but not so much the sentiment.

So I look at this picture of myself…taken on Tuesday afternoon, mere hours after the surgery and it still makes me a little teary. I think to myself “she has no idea what’s still coming…”

I had to be put back on oxygen as part of a multi-faceted approach to managing my pain levels. I’ve never been in so much pain in my whole life (which I recognize is a luxury). It was really scary.

I look at my eyes and they’re still quite a bit medicated, still pretty distant from the realities coming down the pike.

It’s two days later before I’m released from the hospital. Dear friends offered half their home to me for my recovery - a kindness I’ll never quite get over or be able to fully metabolize. That weekend was Easter - the dates we’ve chosen to mark the most significant moment in human history - the events upon which my life and faith are built.

But it’s that Saturday that stands out in my memory. I was really sad and really scared. I can’t quite remember how many times I looked at my mom and asked if I was ever going to feel normal again.

As I scrolled through my socials, there was a recurring theme around the Silent Saturday. For Christians, this marks the day between the crucifixion of Jesus (Good Friday) and His resurrection (Easter Sunday). (For the record, the way we mark it on the calendar at present has always befuddled me as it isn’t quite three days, but that’s a story for another time).

There was a lot of posts around the waiting, around how we shouldn’t doubt God when it seems as though hope might be lost.

In the midst of this, as I laid in bed crying and wondering if I would ever feel better, the Lord asked me if I was willing to give my body the dignity of needing time to heal.

Dignity.

It’s a word I think of a lot with my work. As a person who writes a lot of content about really vulnerable, yet beautifully strong people - I spend a lot of time and energy on how to tell their story with dignity. My conviction is that if they ever read a story I’ve told on their behalf that they would be proud and honored by how they were portrayed.

But I hadn’t thought a lot about giving my body dignity.

What might it look like to honor my body in this moment? It comes to mind when I’ve encouraged friends right after they’ve had babies…to maybe let the “bouncing back” go. To reject the worldly notion that a body must not look like a body who has borne another body. That’s silly (but not the harmless kind of silly, mind you. The insidious, soul-crushing kind of silly for which I have exactly zero patience - thank you for coming to my Ted talk). It’s an enormous privilege to bear life, so a body that has done so ought to be honored…right?

So maybe it’s okay to give this body some space. She’s worked really hard after all. I didn’t even know it, but she was holding two really beautiful kidneys. Apparently, they’re really hard workers - now not supporting one body together, but two on their own. Two entire people. This body…she too has borne new life.

A friend asked me if I felt betrayed by my body in this season…and honestly - I don’t. As Brene Brown has said, she might be the smartest thing about me at present.

I’d really like to jump right back in…like yesterday, or better yet three weeks ago. But she isn’t letting me yet. She pipes up mid-afternoon and reminds me that we need to rest. She wakes me up in the middle of the night with some aching - I don’t quite know how to honor that yet, but I’m listening. She’s moving better each day, and she’s still pretty tired and it might just be okay. I’m not sure how much time she needs, but I’m going to try to give her the dignity of needing some time to heal.

The thing is my timelines are driven by my impatience. And this has more to do with my fear of not being enough than anything else. I’m afraid of losing value or finally demonstrating how little I had to begin with. Left unchecked that will wreak havoc like all fear does. It’ll burn down anything and everyone in its path in its desperate clamor for meaning, even it turns out, my very own body.

How can I expect my body to heal if she’s held hostage by the constraints of my self-made need to be valuable? Might she do better to be held? Deemed valuable even in her not-yet state? To declare today, she’s allowed to rest and just…be.

Maybe my not-yet heart, my not-yet-healed soul could do well to listen to my body and follow suit. Maybe my body is merely learning this first. Perhaps she is making space for all of me to rest even while I wrestle with holding her to impossible standards.

Yet this is true: she doesn’t have to be perfect to be worthy of dignity, space and rest.

And neither do you.

What part of you might need the same dignity today?

Your heart? Grieving a loss that is both sharp and deep, yet long-lasting and seemingly unending…

Your mind? Endlessly looping over problems you can’t quite solve or conversations you wish you could redo…

Your friendships? That might be bearing a little extra weight in this season as we bend and stretch to hold one another’s burdens together…

Your growth? The parts of yourself you just would love to see budge and shift and change, and the fight is long and difficult…

Whatever it is…from one weary one to another, let’s give dignity today.

Time to heal.

Space to grieve.

I don’t think we’ll regret it.