Hold on

So, life has been difficult recently. In particular, we have been leading up to Justice's hernia surgery, which was an experience that I was dreading. Everyone was telling me that it was a simple procedure, that it would be better for him, that he would be a happier person because of it. And, sure, I believed them, but still, there's that part when the nurses come and take him away.... I wasn't looking forward to it. Not at all. So, the other night, as Justice lay on our bed and burbled, I lay there, looking at him and being melancholy. It's at times like this that I wonder about Adam. "If you had known what pain you would cause, would you still have done it?" And I think of all the awful things that we have to do in this world, just to survive, and it hurts me. Just think about what "surgery" is. First, we will pump you full of chemicals to render you unconscious, hovering near death. Then, we will cut you open so that we can poke at your insides. Then we will sew you back up. Cutting to heal. If that's not messed up, I don't know what is. I'm not saying that it's wrong, mind you, but it seems like one more way that this world is seriously broken. And I want out. I'm not feeling suicidal or anything. I'm just tired of it all. So I was driving back from the store today, and I was listening to Andrew Peterson's latest album, The Far Country. In one song, he talks about the "cloud of witnesses" from Hebrews 12:1.

I saw the sun go down on a frozen ocean As the man in the moon was rising And he rode the night all full and bright With his face at the far horizon And the night can be so long, so long You think you’ll never get up again But listen now, it’s a mighty cloud of Witnesses around you—they say “Hold on, just hold on Hold on to the end And all shall be well”

And it occurs to me that, in that cloud of witnesses, is my mother and my grandfather and my grandmother. They all made it through, and now they are pulling for the rest of us. "Hold on to the end." They made it through. Jesus made it through. Maybe I can hold on a bit longer. (Justice came through his hernia surgery just fine. He is home now and resting peacefully.)