Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

• Ezekiel 37:1-3

You have forgotten God your Savior;
    you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress.
Therefore, though you set out the finest plants
    and plant imported vines,
though on the day you set them out, you make them grow,
    and on the morning when you plant them, you bring them to bud,
yet the harvest will be as nothing
    in the day of disease and incurable pain.

• Isaiah 17:10-11

But as for me, afflicted and in pain—
    may your salvation, God, protect me.

• Psalm 69:29

‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

• Revelation 21:4

“Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.”

• C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

This morning I awoke as I have for many mornings over the past month.  I have been home from visiting my son in Tennessee for about a month.  I even wrote about how this was the new beginning of the rest of my life.  I had nothing on the calendar except for the rare doctor visits.  I had nothing on the schedule other than teaching a Sunday school class and writing.  I was open to whatever God had in store for me.

But as I had done for a couple of weeks, I would awaken, later than I used to wake up, usually after placing a pillow over the CPAP to rid me of the “farting” noises as the seal was no longer holding on the mask and air leaked out. … Funny how something that is supposed to protect you from stopping breathing while asleep, letting you get better sleep, is the thing that wakes you a half dozen times during the night…

But I digress.  With a pillow over my face, it could be bright daylight outside, and I would never know, and none of my neighbors have a rooster.  I say that in that my son in Tennessee has a neighbor with a rooster and possibly half the neighborhood awakens at the same time, including your day off.  Yes, my sleep habits are horrible at this point…

When something finally awakens me, I roll the pillow away and turn off the CPAP to prevent further farting noises.  I then say, often out loud, “God, I don’t wanna.  Let me sleep until tomorrow!”

I think it is my inside voice rather than God talking, but someone tells me, “No, you have work to do.  You have nothing on the calendar except writing and your writing volume has been atrocious of late.  Use this day for God’s glory.”

My reply is the same, every day for a couple of weeks, “But every bone in my body is broken.  There is no way that I can get up.  Forget going down two flights of stairs to the basement to write anything.  Forget it!  Every bone in my body is broken.  I do not have to move to prove it to you.  I just know!!”

The voice says, “Okay, move one thing.  One little finger.  One little polite finger.”  With that, I pretty much knew it wasn’t God telling me this.  But I complied, I raised my entire right hand and then lazily flopped it back on the pillow.  Broken bones or not, I was successful.

Then the voice says to move something else.  I growl, but I take my left hand and toss the covers to the unused side of the bed.  Pain from the arthritis in my left hand shoots up my arm, but I am again successful.  Then I sit up.  And the more and more that I move, the less the bones hurt.  In fact, God performs a miracle, at least in part.

You see from the title, there are 206 bones in the human body.  If I had titled this an old man with a lot of pain, no one would want to read it, but I have learned something about that pain if you bear with me.  If every one of my 206 bones are broken, then there are 206 miracles that happen for me to get up every day, just to brush my teeth and go to the toilet, walk down one flight of stairs, weigh myself, take my morning medicines, and then walk down another flight of stairs to the basement and turn on the computer.

By then, I may have other pains, other than the pain of 206 broken bones trying to move.  My back may hurt.  I may have a headache.  If I stub my toe along the way, I count that as a blessing in that the pain is so sharp that I forget the back pain and the headache, at least until the throbbing in my toe subsides.

But then the fun starts.  An orthopedic surgeon once showed me an X-ray of my left hand.  He said it was obviously broken in that the ulna and the radius should not be rubbing against each other.  Then he showed me a different X-ray.  He said, “See those little stars that are covering your hand?  Those are arthritis build-up.  But don’t worry.  Your hand has not started to play connect the dots.  That’s when you might not have full use of your hand.”  I looked at the X-ray and there had to be hundreds of little stars, like someone broke a bag of glitter and the whole thing stuck to my hand.

So, as I start to try to limber my fingers each morning, I look at my left hand that does not want to straighten.  I almost curse the guy that put all the keys that are used the most on the left side of the keyboard.  And then I must focus.  My left hand is usually cupped, as in cupping one’s hand to drink some water, as in Judges 7:6 where Gideon’s 300 soldiers cupped their hands and drank water from them, lapping like dogs. Please, do not ask why, but that seems to be the position where the arthritis hurts the least, and I find it in that position each morning when I wake up and it does not wish to move.

Then I growl again, “If this is going to happen, this hand has to move.  I then force my hand to make the sign that a little five-year-old does to signify his age.  I can usually do it without tears forming.  I then flip from the cupped hand to the outstretched fingers for a few times until the pain subsides.  Often, the pinky finger does not cooperate with the rest of the hand.  It may become stiff and sore until lunchtime.  So if you see an “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” in the middle of a post, you will know it is one of those days and I did not find the error during the edit.  Again, how sadistic can a type setting person be to put the ”A” as the key for the left pinky finger?  Come on!!

Today, this was the third post that I wrote, and I am still doing those left-hand exercises, as the pain keeps returning. My wife taught me to bear with the pain and refrain from taking medicines. I take enough of them anyway. I must keep moving.

And as I was going through the motions… For if you do not keep moving, arthritis wins!!!!

You see, C. S. Lewis is only partly right.  When you do not act for a long time when it is arthritis keeping you from acting, you never get to the point of not feeling.  You will feel the pain even more.  But to Lewis’ point, before you get to the arthritis, not acting and not doing what God’s will could lead to you not even feeling the need to do God’s will.  But then the arthritis gives you a good excuse…  Nope, that is not even a good excuse.  You may have to edit it a bit, but the computer can take dictation these days.  Now, what will the next excuse be?

As for me, if I have breath, I will continue to work until I reach that place with no pain and no tears, at least I will work if it is God’s will to do so.  And I think it keeps my mind sharp.  If I watched TV all day, I might want to move to the next life even quicker.

As I go through the process of keeping moving, I was thinking today about people of younger generations whom I have heard say, “I think God wants me to sit around and do nothing all my life.”  Trust me, those words are not in the Bible, at least in that order for that purpose, and pertaining to you.  If you think a voice told you that, it was not from God.  God’s voice is verified by the Bible.  That’s why I think it was my voice arguing with me earlier.  God would have been forceful, but not that nasty.

If you cannot work with a headache, and if you call every little headache a migraine, then I doubt if that is the will of God.

Every Spring, I get a sinus headache.  The length of the headache varies based on the weather, the pollen, etc.  Once, after about six weeks with no break, my boss commented that I was not my usual self, and had not been for a while.  He admitted that my productivity was not hampered, but I was usually the person who cheered others up and I was not my bubbly self.  I said that I had a headache that had not gone away in some time.  Then my boss said, “Then why don’t you have your God heal you?”

Yep, when someone makes a comment like that, you remember it.

But I say all that, since I cannot speak of being a mother, being a father does not stop, ever, even after the children grow up and leave the nest.  When you have little ones, it does not slow down, even during your worst of headaches, illnesses or other maladies.  You must learn how to rely on God’s strength to keep going, for your sake as much as the child’s sake.

For when you get older and the pain is not trivial anymore, you need to know how to get out of bed in spite of the pain.  That is a skill that you learn when you are younger and there is less pain to deal with.  Like some might tell me even now, “You don’t know the half of it yet.”

You have to move, work, and glorify God while doing so, or you might just die, staring at the ceiling, telling God, “I don’t wanna!”

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.