Can you lament losses AND look for (create) beauty at the same time? Even more pointed, can you lament your own cracks and yet take joy in your current form of being? If not, what might be getting in the way?
I have lymphedema. It is a new diagnosis and one that appears to be something I will live with for the rest of my life. For those unfamiliar with this problem, it is a pooling of lymph fluid in a body part, often a limb, that causes swelling, changes in skin, reduction in mobility, and if untreated, infection. My lymphedema is likely due to successful treatment of a previous cancer. I’m cancer free but now I have this ongoing problem. It is new to me and so far isn’t nearly as difficult as some people’s experience. And yet, it is still life and mindset altering.
What about you? Do you have a change in life or health that now has you “living with” rather than resolving or fixing and “getting back to normal?” Do you have a daily reminder that life is not the way it is supposed to be? For those that do there is a heaviness and an otherness that is experienced. Every decision is now a labor, it must be thought through. If you have this experience, you also recognize that not everyone has this burden–hence feeling cracked and broken compared to those around you.
In some ways, my current treatment has me most discouraged. Treatments (management really) involve tight wrapping of my leg such that it is impossible to wear a shoe. Showering…well that is also next to impossible (apologies to those around me over this next month). There are some possible “fixes” out there that I hold out hope for but this is TBD for me. Currently, I’m on the “live as best you can with it” track. This is an additional form of suffering with chronic illness. Do you hope for change or do you accept management is your new calling in life?
We lament as a way of life
When something is broken, it is a gift to be able to acknowledge the loss. Silencing lament for what has been lost is about as helpful as ignoring cancer. You may be able to ignore it for awhile but it will catch up to you. Sadly, the people closest to us may silence us because either they cannot acknowledge losses or they believe that we’ve had enough time to lament and should now move on in order not to develop a victim mentality.
One summer when I was about 16 I broken my wrist. The cast on my arm made it difficult to enjoy such summer activities as swimming. Though I missed out on swimming, there was always the knowledge that my cast would come off and I could once again function as normal again. What do you do when you know a fix or a repair isn’t going to happen? Maybe you are wheelchair bound and know you cannot ride a bike. Maybe your PTSD means you won’t be able to be in crowds again, even for things like a concert or fireworks display. Maybe you have been betrayed by someone who will never acknowledge or make restitution. What do you do? You lament. You bring your tears and complaints to God and to those around you who are willing to hold and grieve your losses with you. There is no time-limit for this kind of grief. From a Judeo-Christian perspective, your lament is an act of communion with God, always invited, never rejected.1
And we continue to live and look for beauty
A lovely friend of mine gifted me Makota Fujimora’s Art and Faith: A Theology of Making (2020, Yale University Press). I have not finished it but his chapter on Kintsugi–the art of repairing broken teaware with gold–is full of reminders of brokenness AND beauty. He makes many points but here I want to highlight two key points:
- “Kintsugi does not just ‘fix’ or repair a broken vessel; rather the technique makes the broken pottery even more beautiful than the orginal, as the Kintsugi master will take the broken work and create a restored piece that makes the broken parts even more visually sophisticated.” (pp 44-45)
This reminds me that beauty is not just in the original design but also in what has been made out of the fragments of life. If I only accept my body the way it was originally made then it will be hard to find beauty in what it can do now in my sixth decade. If you only want a body not changed by trauma, then it will be hard to find value in your body that is deeply perceptive of danger. Notice how we must accept losses (still lamenting!) in order to find new forms of beauty we had not yet imagined.
- “The ultimate act of a Kintsugi master is not to even attempt to fix the broken vessel, but to behold its potential, to admire its beauty….What kind of church would we become if we simply allowed broken people to gather and did not try to ‘fix’ them but simply to love and behold them, contemplating the shapes that broken pieces can inspire?” (p 50)
Too often we are wanting to fix others instead of creating space for them to be and to discover who they are becoming. Fixing, Fujimora says, is not always a bad thing. You want your mechanic to fix your car. I WANT a fix to my lymphedema. You would be a bit crazy not to want a fix of your health challenge. But the search for a fix sometimes sends a message that what is broken is shameful or something to be hidden. The irony in the church is that it is founded on the theology of scars–the scars of One broken for the healing of the world. Might we find the beauty of these scars that we carry around in our bodies even as we hope for healing and for transformation?
For me, today, I take pleasure that I figured out how to go biking with one shoe and one slide. I felt the air move around me as I rode through the tall shade trees in a nearby park. I sped around corners and marveled at the cacophany of birds singing in the branches and the silent deer peaking between the leaves at this biker with a funny wrap and mis-matched shoes. It might not be on anyone’s list of beauty but for me, it was glorious creation.
1. Want help writing your own lament? Check out this free resource I and others helped create.
Musings on Faith and Psychology 