Fait Accompli

When faced by an uncomfortable or potentially painful task I have often been comforted by one particular sentence in C. S. Lewis’ book Perelandra. To place that sentence in its context, the C. S. Lewis character “Ransom” is faced with horror, dread and potential death as he contemplates physical conflict with the Unman, a demonized and brutal fallen academic. All of a sudden an awareness steals upon him, a certain knowing that, “About this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible.” 1 The background to this event is the knowledge that he has gone through this in different contexts before. Haven’t we all.

Now in facing surgery later this morning, the anesthesiology, the surgery itself and the aftermath (which one comforter characterized as “mega painful”); I am aware that I have gone through these kinds of challenges before and by grace I have come through them. This is I suppose an entwinement of faith and courage, although I hadn’t consciously thought of is before. It is very true that this is a fait accompli, that by this time tomorrow I “will have done the impossible.” All that remains is an awareness, a setting aside of the threat of pain, and a substitution of the knowledge that he who bore a painful death for me will carry me through again as he has so many times before.

But let me insert a little reality here, borrowing an evaluative method from my doctor’s assistant. She asked, “On a scale of one to ten, how painful is it?” At that moment I said quite truthfully “Eleven.” After a change of medications, on the same scale, it was about a three. To apply this to the level of apprehension this morning on a scale of one to ten, this rates about a three, or at moments a four. To say nothing of past emotional and spiritual challenges, I have been through many needles, I.V.s, several colonoscopies (the day before is the worst thing about colonoscopies), and two knee surgeries before. He who carries me through these will carry me through again in His wounded hands. About this time tomorrow I will have come through and will be on the road to recovery.

One challenge that I have been mastering this time around is the surrender of my long and tightly grasped independence and allowing others to help me. As Henry Suso says “No matter how much one abandons oneself, one repeatedly finds more of oneself to abandon.” What snaps into present consciousness is my unsympathetic step-mother screaming at me and barring the door as I stood on the porch bleeding from a head wound. “Don’t bleed on the rug!” was all the empathy I received and the very clear knowledge that the carpet was, on a scale of one to ten, an eleven in her world, and I was less than a zero. Even as a young teen I could figure that out, but I also know that on a scale of one to ten, my heavenly Father’s care and love for me is a thousand to infinity.