The Lazarus Effect
Recently, Michael Santiago Render, better known by his stage name Killer Mike, had a huge effect on me. A little over a month ago, he swept the rap category at the Grammys. He dropped his moniker, invested 500,000 dollars of his own money, and simply put out an honest album that he describes as introducing people to Michael. This year, Easter marked 3 years of me uprooting my family from a ministry that we had been a part of for 25+ years in pursuit of purpose, but his story genuinely inspired me. It has taken me the last 3 years to process and accept this next phase of my journey, only to realize how much I had to unlearn, forgive, and grow from. Realizing the person I truly am, has been a frightening experience because for years I saw myself as one thing, only to realize that once I changed my environment, it wasn’t me at all. Dying to self is extremely hard. And being your true self sometimes can be even harder. I’ve heard many people say that they are afraid to die. And I can understand that when you have things that you have not accomplished yet, or you might feel like there is still something for you to do in your lifetime. I get it, but it can also be looked at as selfishness. Either way, there comes a time in our life when we must accept it. Whether it’s a loved one who has lived a long life as a family patriarch, we personally can’t let them go even if they have come to grips with it. It could be death to a friendship or relationship that is bad for us, or maybe a habit, addiction, or even how we see ourselves may be causing us to die slowly. To slowly pass away is what I would consider suffering. Death is inevitable, but we can drag death along and turn it into misery and anguish.
I really wanted to prove my love to God. But I also realized that I did a lot more by saying that I loved rather than showing that I loved. I also started to understand that during this process I saw that it was hard for me to receive love or trust. In certain parts of my life, it didn’t register or make sense. I was confused or I didn’t recognize love to a certain degree. I was being reprogrammed. All the whoopings and childhood chastisement were brought back to my remembrance, attached with the lesson that I learned from it.Sometimes we go through pain and are allowed to experience it for the sake of the love shown. Tough love is something that I learned and filtered through later in life. Heartbreak is something that eventually helped me grow. But both instances helped me and made me better through the discomfort of undergoing them. It also helps us recognize that sometimes what we want and what God wants for us is different. We can white-knuckle a dream or a self-professed vision that we have for ourselves, only to realize later that it was nothing more than selfish ambition or conditioning.
When a doctor gives you a shot, you only experience pain or discomfort for a short while. I’ve never really been scared of shots, but I have noticed that people who fear needles are usually focused on the pain. I learned that from my children. Trips to the doctor's office were always the worst because the question they would always ask was, “Is it going to hurt?”, even though they knew that it would. When they were younger, I could keep them distracted while the nurse would give them a shot. But as they got older, they would either anticipate the shot, catch on to the game, and no longer fall for the okey doke which would eventually require a mild restraint, or I would give in to promises of candy and toys to go through with it. The funny thing is after the shot, doctors would always give a lollipop to help ease their minds from the overdramatic trauma that the little ones experienced, and they would be back to normal as if nothing happened.
Many times, in my life I’ve witnessed that same similarity in God’s anger. Like those immunization shots, the pain only lasts for a moment, but the benefit of the shot you don’t tend to think about it all being worth it. The good effects of the medicine administered should outweigh the pain that you feel temporarily. I never really thought about it like that. There is nothing permanent about what we face in life. But when the situation arises, we can treat it like it is perpetual. The problem will last only a night, only a season, but can treat them like a binge-worthy rerun marathon in our minds. Like my children, we can focus on the pain and make it so much bigger than it is. We can forget that aside from the momentary hurt, that same instrument is there to help us. We can squirm and become anxious and relive those quick moments of torment every time we have a doctor’s visit, but Psalm 30:5 reads, “for his anger last only a moment, but his favor last a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning”. No matter how difficult or challenging the problem may appear to be, one thing is certain in this, problems don’t last forever. We have to learn that whatever we go through, every doctor’s visit that we attend, is only a temporary situation. There’s nothing permanent about what we go through.
Happiness is the byproduct of obedience. True obedience. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at situations where it seemed like the end of the world, only to laugh about it later in life. We truly have the ability to take our hardships, times of pain, and sacrifice and use those stolen moments to learn from. We can all sit back now and laugh about those doctor visits when my children were younger and how they reacted. We can even sit down with them and joke about it and all have a good laugh. We have also laughed at this, my wife is a professional nurse, and she administers shots all the time. But in her case, depending on the size of the needle, or the lack of experience perceived by the unlucky managing attendant, she too can become uneasy and reluctant. This means that there are some pains that we go through depending on the size, and we can react differently. She has gone through many hours and years of training, to give, understand, and explain the benefits of medicines, yet even with that knowledge of knowing that it’s going to make her better, it is still uncomfortable for her to a certain degree. When he afflicts us, it is to our advantage that we may be partakers of his love and we have to be able to identify it in our storms. I had to learn how to receive it. His love is not perceived as punishment, but it is proof that he loves us. Sometimes, we find the challenge in life is looking for the easiest way around pain. Don’t get me wrong, life throws us for a loop every now and then, but we must learn to take a brief shot of pain in order to receive the lollipop afterward. Our pain should rally our faith. Our discomfort should resemble his love. Pain petitions us in the PM, but bliss awakens us in the AM. We have to stop being afraid of what could go wrong and start being positive about what could go right.
Everything you want is on the other side of fear.
