Do you want to get well?
Pain demands to be felt—or it will demand you feel nothing at all.
—Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way
It began with a dull but persistent ache in my left elbow. At first I couldn’t figure out how I’d injured it. I don’t lift weights or play golf or tennis. I didn’t recall banging my arm hard ovn a door frame or straining the muscle by lifting something especially heavy. The only activity I could link to the pain was a session of vigorous backyard pruning I’d engaged in a few weeks back. But it couldn’t possibly be that, I assumed. After all, who gets injured pruning shrubbery?
Ever since we’d returned from Portland, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the Japanese garden we’d toured. I yearned for the openness and space, the feeling of lightness and airiness I’d experienced there. Yet when I stood on my patio and gazed into my own backyard, all I saw was a tangled thicket of spirea and barberry shrubs, overgrown lilac and burning bushes, a tired crab apple, a gangly river birch, and a magnolia stuffed into a cramped space next to the house. In short, what I wanted in my backyard was an oasis of spacious tranquility; what I had was an overrun mess.
I knew nothing about the Japanese art of aesthetic pruning. Nevertheless, armed with a single piece of knowledge (that fall is generally a good time to prune trees and shrubs) and a pair of dull clippers I’d grabbed from the hook in the garage, I donned my husband’s oversized work gloves, pushed my hair into a headband, and strode toward the two shrubs that pressed up against the sunroom windows.
I worked on those two bushes most of the morning, clipping a branch here and a twig there, stepping back to survey my work and then plunging into the thicket again, each time removing a little more of the foliage in my quest to prune open the center of the shrubs. Some of the branches were quite thick, and as I strained to clamp the metal blade of my loppers around the tough wood, slicing through green sinuous fibers, squeezing the long handles together with all my strength, I felt muscles I didn’t even know I had begin to quiver and burn.
Two hours later, a pile of clipped branches and wilted leaves at my feet, my arms scratched bloody, sweat beading my brow, I stood back, pleased with my work. With much of the foliage and all of the deadwood removed, the shrubs’ main branches were now discernible, arching elegantly away from the sunroom windows. Late afternoon light dappled the shade underneath, and a gentle breeze fluttered the scarlet leaves. The rest of my yard was still an overgrown mess, but these two bushes, at least, were now properly pruned. Abandoning the pile of branches and twigs to bag up later, I moved on to the spirea that lined the picket fence. I couldn’t wait to tackle the rest of the yard.
By the end of the weekend, I had eighteen paper leaf bags and four plastic barrels stuffed with leaves, branches, and even a couple of small limbs to show for my work. My yard, in my opinion, looked vastly improved—tidier, airier, more open, and markedly less brambly. My son Noah, on the other hand, was horrified. “Nice job, Paul Bunyan,” he remarked, standing on the back patio with his arms crossed. Apparently he preferred a less manicured look.
Pleased as I was with my newfound landscaping skills, I was also very, very sore. Turns out, pruning is hard work. My quads and hamstrings were sore from all the bending and crouching; my shoulders, neck, and lower back were stiff; and strangely, I noticed, my left elbow ached and was tender to the touch. That Sunday night, I popped a couple ibuprofen, cranked the heating pad to high, settled into the sofa, and didn’t give my aches and pains another thought.
Three months later, however, my left elbow still throbbed. In fact, it was much, much worse. Each night when I slid under the covers I carefully cushioned my arm with multiple pillows, nestling it up against my rib cage. Most nights, though, this elaborate ritual was futile; the aching was so bad it often awakened me from sleep. I couldn’t lift the teakettle off the stove or the milk jug from the fridge. Twice a week I asked my husband to haul the laundry hamper down two flights of stairs from our bedroom to the basement; it hurt my elbow too much to carry it myself. I was taking ibuprofen almost daily, though it barely dulled the persistent pain, and every evening I kept my arm wrapped in a heating pad while I watched TV.
“You really need to make an appointment with an orthopedist,” my husband advised, after I’d complained about the discomfort for the umpteen millionth time. “That kind of relentless pain isn’t normal.”
“It’s fine,” I insisted. I told myself the discomfort would eventually go away on its own. My plan was to “wait and see.” Deep down, though, I think I knew Brad was right. I think I knew that whatever was wrong with my elbow was beyond a simple muscle pull. I also suspected it wasn’t going to get better on its own. Yet I resisted. I was in denial, refusing to admit my elbow was bad enough to see a doctor. Day after day, week after week, I procrastinated calling the orthopedist’s office for an appointment. I didn’t want to live with the debilitating pain that was clearly impacting my daily life, yet I also refused to pick up the phone and take the first step toward a remedy.
Of course I did what we all do when we are suffering from a physical malady: I googled my symptoms. WebMD informed me that I likely had one of two problems. Best-case scenario: tendonitis (otherwise known as “tennis elbow”—or in my case, “pruning elbow”). Worst-case scenario: a torn tendon. Tendonitis, I learned, is typically treated with a combination of physical therapy and cortisone injections, while a torn tendon is remedied with surgery. Neither option was particularly appealing. Who has time for weekly physical therapy sessions? Who in their right mind wants a needle the size of a yardstick (I’m exaggerating . . . but barely) inserted into their tender, aching elbow? Who wants surgery, with anesthesia and scalpels and more pain? Not me, that’s who.
The truth is, I was afraid of surgery. I’d never had more than a couple of stitches, never broken a bone, never been under anesthesia. I was afraid of the pain, and worse, I was afraid of surrendering my body to another human being, a stranger. What if the surgeon made the injury worse? What if he or she made a mistake? What if something went wrong? It sounds silly, I realize. After all, we’re talking outpatient elbow surgery, not a quadruple bypass. But as ridiculous as it sounds, it’s the truth: I was afraid, and because of that fear, I resisted making the call. Rather than taking the frightening but ultimately healing step toward diagnosis and treatment, I chose to live with the familiar and therefore less threatening pain of what had become a debilitating, chronic condition.
Do You Want to Get Well?
One day, while Jesus was visiting Jerusalem for Passover, he walked by a pool where the sick and disabled gathered in the shade. Legend had it that an angel of the Lord would descend to stir the waters from time to time, and the first person who entered the pool when its waters were disturbed would be cured of whatever affliction he or she suffered. Dozens of ill and disabled people waited by the pool each day, hoping for a chance to be the first person to enter the rippling water, hoping for a chance to be healed.
Jesus came upon a man lying near the water who had been ill for thirty-eight years. Turning to the man, Jesus asked him what sounded like a simple question: “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6). Every time I read this story, Jesus’ question always sounds odd to me. After all, the man had made his way down to the healing pool every day for decades, hoping that somehow, someday, he would be the first to touch the water when it was stirred by the angel. It seems obvious the man wanted to be well. Why else would he go to the trouble of hauling himself there day after day? The man himself told Jesus as much. The problem was, he explained, he hadn’t been healed because someone always managed to slip into the pool first. Since he was too ill (or perhaps paralyzed, as some Bible translations state) to walk himself, and since he didn’t have anyone to carry him, the man was never able to make it to the water in time to be healed.
We don’t know much about the man lying next to the pool of Bethesda. Aside from the fact that he’d been ill or disabled for thirty-eight years, that he’d been coming to the pool for healing, presumably for a long time, and that so far, he’d been unable to reach the waters, we don’t hear anything else about his daily existence. Yet even these sparse details are enough for us to understand the deeper implication behind Jesus’ puzzling question: Do you want to get well? What appears at first glance an odd, unnecessary question with an obvious answer is, in reality, much more complicated.
Thirty-eight years is a long time. It’s more than enough time for a person to settle into a daily routine, to establish habits and practices that will enable survival. It’s probably enough time for a person to get used to a situation, in spite of the challenges inherent in those circumstances. Thirty-eight years is enough time to grow complacent. It’s enough time to become resigned. Thirty-eight years is enough time to become leery of any proposed alternative, especially one that sounds too good to be true.
Think about the man’s situation for a moment. Likely unable to work, he undoubtedly received handouts of food, drink, and money from people passing by the pool. He had almost certainly established routines that allowed him to receive assistance and benefit from the generosity of others. After thirty-eight years of living on the streets of Jerusalem, the man knew what he had to do to survive. After thirty-eight years, his daily routine was ingrained in him. He’d been sick for so long—perhaps for his entire life—he could hardly remember any other way. While his life was likely not easy, at the very least it was familiar. After thirty-eight years, being sick and dependent on others was the only life the man knew.
The self-created identity of the man at the pool of Bethesda was “sick.” “A sick man” was who he was and how he had defined himself for thirty-eight years. This was not his core identity—his “soul, [his] True Self, [his] unique blueprint”1—the identity given to him by God when God wove him together. “A sick man” was the identity he had adopted after years of illness and dysfunction. His habits and routines, his entire way of life, in fact, supported that identity. His life revolved around his sickness. The ill man’s daily routines and habits, such as sitting by the pool, passing the time, waiting for someone to carry him to the healing waters, were the scaffolding that supported his self-created false identity. The status quo—the familiar—was easy. Stepping into wellness—the unknown—was a risk.
Jesus stood before the man and offered him the hope of real healing and a transformed life. To be truly well was probably not a reality the man had considered for a long time, if ever. And yet here the gift of healing was being extended like a cool cup of water in the midst of a desert. It was decision time. All that was required of the man was the faith and trust to say yes to Jesus’ question.
I wonder if, in that moment, the man had doubts. I wonder if he was skeptical of Jesus’ invitation. After all, it sounded a little too easy, after thirty-eight years spent languishing at the pool, to simply stand as Jesus had instructed. I wonder if the man was afraid to trust, afraid of being disappointed or let down. I wonder, too, if he considered how answering yes to Jesus’ question and standing to walk would impact his life—how, as a healed man, he would be expected to find work, to forgo the assistance of others and learn to provide for himself instead. Did he consider the new challenges healing would present? Was he afraid of the freedom that awaited him? I wonder if the man had ever really, truly considered what it would mean for him to be well.
Sometimes We Don’t Recognize When We Are Sick
Change—even good, transforming, healing change—is hard. We develop habits and routines for ourselves that offer comfort in their familiarity. We are set in our ways, unwilling to give up the false securities and identities we’ve crafted as self-protection. We are unwilling to trust, unwilling to surrender. As Franciscan priest Richard Rohr says, “Setting out is always a leap of faith, a risk in the deepest sense of the term. . . . The familiar and the habitual are so falsely reassuring, most of us make our homes there permanently.”2 I know this firsthand because I’ve experienced it, not only when I injured my elbow and refused to call the doctor, but also in my life as a whole.
Like the man lying beside the pool, I didn’t recognize the false identity I’d crafted for myself over the years. My self-created identity was “producer” and “achiever.” This was not the identity God gave me when he wove me together; this was the identity I created for myself and then pursued as if my life depended on it. My daily routines and habits—busyness, efficiency, production, ticking off boxes on a never-ending to-do list—were the scaffolding that supported my self-created identity. My false identity was really the only identity I’d ever known or recognized, and it was so familiar, so routine, so second-nature, I never entertained the possibility of any other option.
The question about intimacy I heard that day on the park bench was an important one because it was a question from God. I know this now, although I didn’t realize it at the time. That weird, unexpected, uncomfortable question was essentially Jesus’ way of asking me, “Do you want to be well?” In other words, “Do you want to drop your self-created identity and embrace the person I created you to be?”
In that moment, I was the sick man lying next to the pool of Bethesda. But unlike the sick man, I didn’t even acknowledge the question I was being asked because I didn’t recognize I was sick. In fact, I’m sure God had asked me this same question numerous times before in various iterations, but until that day on the park bench, I’d never even heard it. And here’s the most important point: I’d never heard the question because I’d always been too busy to stop and listen for it. I couldn’t hear the invitation into healing through the cacophony of my own clanging, hustle-produce-achieve-succeed life. Unlike the man at the pool, I wasn’t ever still enough to hear the question Jesus yearned for me to answer. I was so busy maintaining the scaffolding that was keeping my self-created identity intact, I didn’t have the time or space to listen to much else.
That day on the park bench, however, I was still. After weeks of daily sitting, I was finally learning to be quiet, at least for a few minutes at a time. And in that quiet space, in that small window of silence and solitude, God slipped in with an invitation. He’d undoubtedly been inviting me all along.
As author Mark Buchanan points out, God often speaks in questions. He does so in the Bible (think, for example, about one of the first communications between God and human beings, when God asks Adam and Eve in the garden, after they’ve eaten the fruit, “Where are you?” [Gen. 3:9]), and he does so in our own present-day lives. “What does the Voice speak?” Buchanan asks. “More often than not, a question.”3
When I heard the question about intimacy that day on the park bench, I didn’t immediately recognize the voice as God’s. In fact, it actually sounded a lot like my own voice, in my own head. Dallas Willard says this is the way God most often speaks to us—“in our own spirits.” Willard adds, “The form of one’s own thoughts and attendant feelings is the most common path for hearing God for those who are living in harmony with God. God uses our self-knowledge or self-awareness to search us out and reveal to us the truth about ourselves and our world.”4 The question about intimacy wasn’t so much a question from myself to myself, but from God to me. Disconcerting though it was, the question was an invitation into wellness and wholeness—an invitation to name my sickness, to acknowledge it, and to begin the journey toward discovering my truest, most authentic self, the God-created self hidden beneath the false identity I’d clung to for so long.
But unlike the man at Bethesda, I didn’t answer God’s question. I didn’t say yes to the invitation. Leery and a little afraid of what lay beyond the invitation and beneath that unnerving question, I shut it down as quickly as possible and resumed my breakneck production schedule. No time for questions like that when there’s a dog to walk and emails to answer and a Tupperware drawer to organize!
That day on the park bench I did not stand up and step into vulnerability and exposure. Instead, I stayed right where I was, stagnating at the edge of the pool. I stayed in the place I knew, where familiarity and routine reigned. I refused to relinquish what I’d built and what I thought I knew for the mystery God was inviting me into. As Rohr acknowledges, “If you have spent many years building your particular tower of success and self-importance—your personal ‘salvation project,’ as Thomas Merton called it—you won’t want to leave it.”5 I didn’t want to abandon the identity I’d created and all the routines and habits holding that identity in place. I turned down the invitation into true wholeness and wellness. The truth is, I wouldn’t even admit I was sick.
Wilt Thou Be Made Whole?
Eight months after Prune-a-palooza, I finally called and made an appointment with an orthopedist. In the exam room, after he had bent my elbow back and forth and pressed and prodded and moved it this way and that, the doctor asked me when I had first noticed the pain. “It’s been a while,” I answered, unwilling to admit the injury was several months old.
The doctor pressed for more information: “How long is a while? Two weeks? A month? Two months?”
“Well . . .” I hesitated. “More like eight months.”
The orthopedist stopped typing and looked up from his computer screen. “What took you so long to come in?” he asked, meeting my eyes over the laptop.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I guess I was hoping it would get better on its own.”
The truth is, I’d been in denial for much of those eight months, refusing to acknowledge there was a real problem behind the pain in my elbow. I didn’t want to admit there was something truly wrong, and so I told myself, and my husband, that it was “fine.” I ignored the obvious symptoms because I was afraid and frankly because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of doctor’s appointments and physical therapy and treatments and possible surgery. In some ways, it seemed easier and less painful to stay broken than it was to be healed.
In the end, I needed physical therapy and multiple injections administered with a needle that looked better suited for knitting than cortisone delivery. And when those remedies failed, I ended up having surgery for what an MRI ultimately revealed to be a torn tendon. Recovery was even more painful and more tedious than I’d feared. Suffice it to say, wearing a cast in Nebraska’s searing August heat is nothing short of the itchiest form of torture you can imagine. Eight months later, however, I can state with confidence that my elbow is as good as new (albeit with the addition of a glamorous two-inch scar). Last weekend I even pruned a couple of shrubs for the first time since the initial injury, though I was markedly less ambitious this time.
The journey to wholeness and healing, it turns out, does not begin with surgery or even with diagnosis. The journey to wholeness begins with admitting you are broken. That’s why Jesus asked the man at the pool of Bethesda, “Do you want to get well?” Or, as the King James translation so tellingly puts it: “Wilt thou be made whole?”
When I read that question aloud, I always put the emphasis on the word “want” (or, in King James, “wilt”), because to me, it’s a question about desire—“Do you want to get well?” “Wilt thou be made whole?” Wellness—wholeness—is a choice given to us. Jesus knows true wholeness requires more than the act of healing itself. The journey to true wholeness requires our desire to be well, our desire to be whole. And our desire to be well and whole grows first out of an acknowledgment that we are broken.
Jesus’ question, “Do you want to get well?” clearly sparked something deep within the man at the pool, igniting a desire that overpowered his doubts and fears and propelled him to step beyond his familiar routine. As Ruth Haley Barton observes in Sacred Rhythms, “The man reached within himself to that place of deep desire and deep faith and did what he was told. Somehow his willingness to follow his desire opened the way for him to experience Jesus’ healing power.”6 His choice to stand when Jesus commanded him to was an act of faith. The man was healed, but he had to stand in faith, putting his trust in Jesus, in order to reveal the healing.
Sometimes, it seems, God heals without any participation or collaboration from us. Other times, perhaps more often, God invites us into the healing he is doing in us. We do not need to heal ourselves—the indwelling Holy Spirit does that for us—but we do need to want to get well; we need to desire wellness and choose it. And in order to want to get well, and ultimately to be well, we first have to acknowledge and name the problem that stands in the way.
My trouble—and perhaps you can relate—was that I had no sense whatsoever of my deepest desires. I had no idea what my soul longed for. If you’d asked me what my deepest desires were at the time the question about intimacy bubbled to the surface, my answer undoubtedly would have been connected to productivity or achievement. To be a successful author. To sell more books. To have a bigger platform. I know those answers sound shallow and empty, but that’s the honest truth. I had no idea what I truly desired. I was chasing shallow wants that skittered over the surface. I was chasing the wind.
“When was the last time you felt it—your own longing, that is? Your longing for love, your longing for God, your longing to live your life as it is meant to be lived in God?” Barton asks in Sacred Rhythms. “When was the last time you felt a longing for healing and fundamental change groaning within you?”7 I underlined those sentences the first time I read them, but I don’t know that I really read them. I saw the words, but I didn’t see them. “Do not rush past this question,” Barton cautions; “it may be the most important question you ever ask.”8
I rushed past the question. I’d been rushing past the question for my entire life—a life so crammed to overflowing, full with everything I thought I needed and everything I thought I desired. I was blind to my own emptiness, my own longing. I was fine. Everything was fine. I didn’t have time for desires. I had no desires. I didn’t feel “a longing for healing and fundamental change” because I didn’t need to be healed or changed.
Or so I thought.
Let Your Soul Speak
A tree will tell you when it’s ill, broken, or in need of a good pruning, but the signs are often subtle—two branches crossed at an odd angle; bark that’s cracked or that silently weeps fluid; discolored leaves; dark, brittle branches and twigs; fungal growth. Recently the 100-year-old pin oak in my backyard lost a large chunk of thick bark about a quarter of the way up its trunk. One day we noticed the bark looked loose and appeared to be pulling away from the rest of the tree. A few weeks later a two-foot section of bark plummeted to the ground, leaving a swath of bare, light-colored wood exposed on the trunk. It could be that the tree is simply going through a rapid growth spurt following a period of drought—outgrowing its bark like a snake outgrows its skin. On the other hand, the loss of bark may be an indication of pest infestation or the result of a fungal disease. Only a certified arborist will be able to definitely tell us what, if anything, afflicts the oak tree.
Similarly, the leaves of the river birch tree that abuts our backyard patio turn yellow and drop from its branches when the weather turns hot and dry. The first year this happened I called the local nursery in a panic, assuming the tree was dying. Turns out, river birches don’t do well in drought, but there is an easy remedy. After a few days with a steadily dripping hose laid at the base of its trunk, the river birch perked up and our patio was no longer littered with prematurely yellow leaves.
Our own souls will tell us where we are broken and in need of healing, but like the trees in my backyard, the signs are often subtle—a crack or fissure; a brittleness; a fading or drooping; an unexpected weeping; a raw, exposed place. This is why quiet, stillness, silence, and solitude are so imperative. We need time, space, and stillness not only to observe what’s happening on the surface, but also to discern what these subtle signs can tell us about what’s going on deep within.
Turns out, I may not have outwardly acknowledged what needed healing in me, but my soul knew. My soul was working on a new thing deep inside me, before I was even aware of it. It’s why I stopped to sit on the park bench. It’s why I sat on that park bench every day for months on end, through the blistering heat of summer and the biting winds of winter. I didn’t really get it at the time. I hardly knew why I was sitting there day in and day out. I thought I simply needed a little quiet, a break from the constant hum of my daily life. But my soul knew. My truest, most authentic self knew. The person deep inside me, the person created and woven together by God, knew and yearned for me to say yes to the invitation into wholeness.
It’s tempting to rush past longing and desire. I know this, because rushing past was my modus operandi for as long as I can remember. But we must resist the temptation. Looking desire and longing in the eye is uncomfortable, I know. It’s frightening and unnerving. But tapping into that deep desire—reaching down, like the man at the pool of Bethesda did, and being willing to name your desire—is the key to living into your God-given wholeness.
You have desire. Desire is inside you, and it’s there even when you don’t recognize it or acknowledge it. Desire is what compels us toward God. It’s the Holy Spirit, thrumming and pulsating with life and love, propelling us forward, leading us by the hand toward a deep understanding of our belovedness. “Desire,” Barton says, “is the life-blood surging through the heart of the spiritual life. You may not realize it, but your desire for God is the truest, most essential thing about you. Your desire for God and your capacity to connect with God as a human soul is the essence of who you are.”9
Your soul will reveal your broken places, the wounded parts of you that need healing and restoration. Your soul will tell you how your life is meant to be lived in God and with God. Your soul will reveal your deepest longing. Your soul will speak. But first, you must be still enough to hear its quiet whisper.
Once again, it all comes back to stillness, space, and solitude. We must give ourselves the opportunity to be still in order to be present for God, to be quiet in order to hear the whispers of our soul. We cannot begin the process of healing until we first acknowledge that we are wounded, and that kind of deep, honest acknowledgment requires time, stillness, and space.
As you continue to sit for regular periods of directed rest, consider these questions: