When Things Go Very, Very Wrong

For the past six months my life has been dominated by and focused on one thing - pain. It started about two weeks before my last on-site visit here back in May. When I was here, some of you who are medically astute suggested that I might have some version of sciatic pain. Unfortunately, you were pretty much right. A pinched nerve. Two pinched nerves, actually - nerves 3 and 4, for those of you who know about such things. It was caused by a degenerative, partially protruding disk in my spine. It was all too common.

Having back trouble, I discovered, is a little like being pregnant for the first time - all of a sudden you discover how many others share the experience. I, like numerous others, did everything suggested to try to avoid surgery, but it was not to be. Right off, I had to severely curtail my normal activities. By the middle of August, when I had my first surgery, I was so crippled by pain that I could not sit at a table long enough to complete a full meal and I could not walk more than a few feet without excruciating pain. Like many others who share back troubles, I was ready for surgery. Anything to alleviate this unrelenting pain.

After my surgery, I was optimistic, although my doctor had warned me that my case was atypical and he could not guarantee success. Well, what doctor could? Nonetheless he, too, was optimistic. He was relatively sure I could resume my normal duties here come September. My surgery was unusual enough that I think he found my case "interesting," which is fine for doctors, but may not be quite so great for the patient. I recall something about him having to go in from two different angles in order to get at the offending disk. What I really understood about the operation was that my incision would need to be slightly larger than normal and that there was less certainty about the success of the outcome. Nonetheless, when I left the hospital that first time, I left with the knowledge that my doc felt good about the operation; he'd found what he'd expected to find and he'd dealt with it successfully. I returned home expecting to get better.

I got worse, not better. It turned out that there were two separate problems, the second of which was so subtle it was hard to detect. But no one knew that then. About two and a half weeks after my first surgery, I was spending most of my time in bed, propped up with assorted pillows and an ice bag to try to minimize my discomfort. I watched the clock constantly to see how long I needed to wait until I could take my next pain pill. I had been taking heavy doses of narcotics for many weeks and I began to have some side effects from all of this medicine. My anxiety rose to new heights, along with my pain. Finally my doctor suggested that I be re-hospitalized so I could receive better pain management. Translation: I'd be put on morphine. The last thing I wanted was to go back into the hospital and have morphine. But I was, as in the poem I read earlier, combing my hair with my fingers to try to get rid of my anxiety and pain. My next door neighbor came over, took one look at me and, quite literally, combed my hair with her fingers. Her fingers grew wet with my uncontrollable tears. "Sarah," she said, "I think you need to go back into the hospital." I heard her. I heard her care and love. I went.

That second hospitalization is pretty blurry in my memory. I was in a lot of pain, in spite of the morphine. I cried a lot. I lost weight. I felt weak - physically, emotionally, spiritually. It was a week before my doc and his partner decided another operation might help. Somewhere in the midst of all that time I realized that, somehow, things had gone very, very wrong for me.

What happens when things go very, very wrong? What do people do? How do they cope? How do they come to terms with the dis-function in their lives? How do they heal, if, in fact healing is possible?

Based on my recent experience, I have a clearer understanding of these issues than I once did. Of course, I also realize that I am not alone in having things go very, very wrong. As Andy Rooney once said, "we are born naked, wet, and hungry. Then things get worse." Lily Tomlin's view was that, "Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse." Helen Hayes, at 73, quipped, "The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy." Someone else said, "Midlife is when you bounce (a lot), but you don't bounce back. It's more like splat!" Splat! I relate to that. Nonetheless, I am aware that for some people things go even wronger than they did for me. I am aware that some of you, for instance, have had really bad things happen to you during this very same summer. Nobody has a monopoly on things going wrong.

What I'd like to do this morning is to share some of my new-found reflections on this subject. These are not definitive answers to what happens when things go wrong. It may be quite different for you. Or you may agree with me and have other ideas as well. What I'd like to offer from the perspective of my own difficulties is basically just a starting place for deeper consideration by us all.

The first thing I'd like to offer is that, when things go very, very wrong, other people make a huge difference. Other people can even make wrong things disappear, or, if not disappear, at least get better, or, if no improvement is to be had, other people can make the burdens bearable. Other people, those who are strong in their own lives at the moment, reach out and help. They send notes. They send flowers. They hold your hand. They comfort. They do laundry for you and cook for you and do yard-work that otherwise wouldn't get done. They give of themselves. They listen. They comb out the grief. Sometimes this brings a newness to the relationship that otherwise might never have occurred. I remember the day at the hospital when my husband Dan first brushed my hair for me. It was a small task, but I was too weak to do it easily. In all our time together, I can never remember Dan's brushing my hair before. It was a great, magnificent act of intimacy.

Other people are important. A church - this church - is an ideal garden for the birth of such magnificent acts of intimacy and care. And because we live in an interdependent web, what touches one person affects us all. When things go even a little bit wrong for one individual, the whole community is affected, even if nobody realizes it at the time. The challenge for us here, both individually and collectively, is to increase our awareness of those things that are going wrong for someone else, to increase our own willingness to admit when we are experiencing personal difficulty, and to give to each other positively when such things occur. Let us remember this especially as our world tumbles into more terrorism, as war threatens to displace our normalcy, as anxiety becomes a standard which more and more people (young and old alike) experience on a regular basis. Other people help. The poem I read - yes, it was a pow wow. Not exactly what we might think of as "church." But church it was, nonetheless. If we are unable to offer that kind of shared caring in this community, then something is very, very wrong within, and we need to address it. Such wrongness can happen. Sometimes it no doubt does happen. I am here to reassure you, however, that I now know from personal experience that this church reaches out. This church helps. It is one of our greatest strengths.

It's time for a small advertisement. I want to advertise our larger church, that is, our Unitarian Universalist Association. I will tell you one story. It was a couple of weeks after I was home from the second surgery. My phone rang. It was a colleague with whom I had not spoken for some time. The Rev. Michelle Bentley had just taken on a newly created position as the director of professional development for our UUA ministry. She had heard from Nancy Heege, our district executive, about recent troubles of one of our UUA ministers - specifically, of my troubles. Michelle expressed her concern. Then she asked what I needed. I was so surprised I didn't know what to answer. "Do you need money?" she asked.

I paused. I thought about all the expenses my illness had brought on. I gave a quick (although not the first) prayer of thanks that Dan's insurance policy had a stop loss, albeit a generous one. I recognized my own decreased income due to the fact that I'd been unable to work. I told Michelle that we had insurance. Then I thought about my depression and anxiety. At that time I wasn't even conscious of how pervasive was my continued sense of vulnerability to a reoccurrence of the worst of the pain. I had post-operative pain, (still do, even now), but while it was (and is) constant it was nothing like it was before my second surgery. But my fear of pain has increased along the lines of something called post-traumatic stress disorder.

A week or so ago, Dan and I went to a scary movie. Normally, I can watch almost any movie. I had to leave that one. Emotionally, I couldn't separate the fear I was experiencing in the movie from the fear of falling or having an accident or in some other way bringing back all that pain. I understand this now. I understand because I've started going to a professional counselor who has helped me identify the full impact of medical trauma. And I am going to this counselor because I said, quite honestly, to the Rev. Bentley that I had been hesitating to go into therapy because of the money. She didn't miss a beat. "I'll put a check in the mail to you tomorrow," she said. This, out of the blue from our Unitarian Universalist Association. Not bad. It makes me proud to be a part of this Association. People, organizations of people, make a difference.

When things go very, very wrong, our beliefs also become critical. When I was between surgeries and coping with ever increasing pain, a friend brought me a couple of those meditation tapes which are based on the notion that your mind can heal your body. Although I have always liked this notion in theory, I have never been able to fully put it into practice. The challenge of unprecedented pain made me willing to try anew. In fact, it challenged me to try almost anything that might help. I won't say that I was entirely successful in putting only positive thoughts into my mind, but, listening to these tapes, I did manage to fall asleep some nights with more ease than usual. The basic premise is an old Biblical one: with belief, all things are possible.

This idea appears in many different situations. A few weeks ago someone in this church sent me an email of one variation which I particularly like and, although I know many of you may have also seen this story, I'm fond enough of it to repeat it now. A native American boy was talking with his grandfather. "What do you think about the world situation?" he asked. The grandfather replied, "I feel like two wolves are fighting in my heart. One is full of anger and hatred. The other is full of love, forgiveness, and peace." "Which one will win?" asked the boy. To which the grandfather replied, "The one I feed."

It is not always easy to feed the positive things into your mind. As Dave Berry said, "No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously." I'm reminded of the old adage that there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good morning, Lord," and there are those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good Lord, it's morning." Too often, it's just plain hard to be affirmative. It is especially hard to do this when things are going very, very wrong. Sometimes the best you can do is to verbalize a positive affirmation even if you don't necessarily believe it, but simply wish you did or could.

There's a cute story that illustrates this. One day in court a prosecuting lawyer asked the farmer on the witness stand, "At the scene of the accident, did you tell the policeman you had never felt better in your life?" "That's right," the farmer replied. "Well, then, how is it that you are now claiming you were seriously injured when my client's auto hit your wagon?"

The farmer explained. "When the policeman arrived, he went over to my horse, who had a broken leg, and shot him. Then he went over to Rover, my dog, who was all banged up, and shot him. When he asked me how I felt, I just thought, under the circumstances, it was a wise choice of words to say I'd never felt better in my life."

Even if this story exaggerates the point somewhat, there is truth in the power of affirmation. Some folks hold that simply stating affirmations helps healing. My recent ordeal has helped me to confirm this on a deeper, more active level.

Why is this important enough for me to mention the power of such affirmation in a sermon? Aside from the possible advantage that each of us might gain by applying such a practice in our own private lives, there is wisdom here for our church as a whole. In the past, some things have gone wrong in this church. Heck, things go wrong in every church. Sometimes they are huge things, sometimes tiny. Regardless, they impact the health of our faith community. To which, I say, it matters what we choose to feed into our collective life together.

Now, once again, I am able to say to you that I am impressed with what I see happening here, even though my "seeing" has been from a bit of a distance of recent. I have, for example, heard good things about the Healthy Congregations Workshop last weekend, not the least of which is how well we "hosted" the event for our district exec and guests from two other churches. This workshop is very much in keeping with the positive ideas in the "Generation to Generation" discussions we began last spring. It's a very good sign that members of this church are taking these ideas seriously.

But there is more. I've received via email some of the material which members of the Long Range Planning committee are exploring and it's just beautiful stuff, emphasizing the goal of seeking the root cause of success rather than the root cause of failure. I believe it is called the Appreciative Inquiry approach. It focuses, for example, not on an analysis of causes but on envisioning what might be; not on what is wrong, but on what is best; not on stress, but on positive power, hope and inspiration. If you don't know about the work the long range planning committee is doing with this approach, I hope you will make the effort to find out. This approach has the promise of turning this church into a spiritually healthy congregation.

Just exactly what would you expect a healthy congregation to look like and feel like? UU minister Alice Blair Wesley, whose words I have shared with you at other times, has written a wonderful reply to this question. I've asked Alma Hatfield, chair of our long range planning committee, to read it aloud for you. It's a little on the long side, but I think it's worth the time. Here, in the Rev. Blair Wesley's words:

Members of a spiritually healthy congregation love their worship services. The people like to sing and obviously enjoy lots of other music. They are glad to have the children with them. They enjoy the portion of the service for the children as much as the children do. There's a wide range of feelings expressed in every service. People laugh at silly things during announcements; there are times of palpable deep silence and, always some tears. They treasure solid sermons and tell their minister(s) when s/he has taught them something, helped them with a particular issue, spoken the good old truths just right, or otherwise hit one outa the park. Before and after services, you see many of the people greeting each other with affection.

The people in a spiritually health congregation care about the cleanliness and good order of their building and grounds. They care about how the place looks because they think everything that happens there is important. So, no junk, no weeds, no peeling paint. It's the usual thing to see members setting out plants, scouring the sinks, picking up the orders of service left in the meeting room, putting up a new shelf in a classroom.

The people in a spiritually healthy congregation almost all take their turn and do their part. They rotate every office and chair at least every three years, because they so much want always to be bringing on new interests, abilities and talent, in new and long term members. They don't want anybody "owning" leadership slots and have no "paper" committees which seldom meet. They know what policies to follow to avoid "turf" battles" and "burn-out" and to encourage freshness in all the church's programs.

The people in a spiritually healthy congregation are alive to the special needs and the special challenges of their particular community and time. E.g., many, many people now want and need depth, but their time is in short supply. So throughout the church the people work at being tender and efficient, as thorough as they need to be but not long-winded or micro-managing or talking every issue to death. Numerous lay leaders, in office and out, make it abundantly clear in all kinds of ways that this church doesn't do gossip, triangling, ridicule or sarcasm, because this is a community in which trust and trustworthiness are the norm. The people in a spiritually healthy congregation knock themselves out to be transparent. Even closed groups routinely describe their activities from time to time. Every committee posts its minutes for any who care to read them. The board is fanatic about publishing its agenda before meetings, and afterward all carried motions, including a summary of pros and cons expressed in discussion.

The people in a spiritually healthy congregation talk about money easily, expect financial facts to be delivered simply, and give generously without making a big deal of it. The annual canvass is completely wrapped up in one month. Every staff person is paid at least a living wage, on time every time, with the same benefits the members receive from their work. Members are proud that their staff people have the tools and equipment they need to do their work well.

The people in a spiritually health congregation take their continuous involvement in work for justice and mercy as much for granted as they do the church piano and RE curricula, but they don't take up every single liberal issue just anybody out there might suppose they ought. They work in a few focused areas, in which a significant number of members know what they are doing, or are trying hard to learn, in concrete and many-other-member engaging ways. Barring a very sparsely populated area, a spiritually healthy congregation is growing. You couldn't keep new people out if you tried.
[Above quotation used with permission]

So is this our vision? Would you like it (or something similar) to be our vision? To which I ask, "Why not?" We're already on our way. It's sort of like listening to those meditation tapes. With belief, all things are possible.

Which brings me to the final idea I'd like to visit this morning, if only very briefly. Again, I'd like to use my own recent ordeal as a starting point and then extrapolate from that experience to our larger life as a spiritual community. In brief, the idea is that when things go very, very wrong, there is increased opportunity for spiritual transformation. My pain made me want to revisit the way I pray. I found myself calling on old visions of God which I had long ago thrown out. But I also found myself praying with a kind of intense thankfulness for all the blessings of friendship and care which people gave me, and for every hint of good health to come which I could sense. To be honest, some of this spiritual need was confusing for me, and it often left me feeling less than satisfied. Somehow, something was in conflict in my inner soul, and I could not resolve the conflict. I think the resolution is yet to come, as I gradually regain my health. In fact, I think part of the resolution will be something I will share with you in some of my sermons. I'm going to begin the next time I'm here by revisiting my ideas about a "Cantorian" God. This is something I've written about, but not something I've talked about here. I think - I hope - you'll find it stimulating and worthwhile. I think - I hope - I'll find it helpful in working through my own spiritual transformation, wherever that journey takes me.

And that, my friends, is really what this whole business about being a UU faith community is about. We are all on spiritual journeys, each one slightly different. My personal opinion as well as my professional opinion is that we could do more as a church to foster this spiritual growth. Please do not hear this as a mandate that you should believe in something you have no desire to believe in - a divine being, a God of someone else's making, whatever. But do hear it as a desire for more openness on each of our parts, for more transparency, as Rev. Blair Wesley would say, about what Spirit means in our personal lives and in the life of this church. You know, in one of our favorite hymns we sing "Spirit of Life, come unto me..." What does that mean? What does that really mean?

Let us help each other to honestly find out.