Nothingness

I'm lying on a thinly padded, narrow table.  Three ladies are working over me, tugging me this way and that, lining me up just right.  They are making crosses on me with permanent markers...x marks the spot.  Then for the first time in my life, I get tattoos--nine tiny dot tattoos.  It scratches and burns, but not for long.  Three dot tattoos for each place they will do radiation.

My back hurts and it's very hard to hold still for so long on this very first day.  It sinks in that my life is on the line, so I don't move.  The arm moves out above me to take "films."  Then it retracts.  Then another larger mechanical arm moves over me with a two-foot diameter head on it.  I see beams of laser lights on the ceiling, and I hear the noise that means my body is being penetrated by a destructive, and possibly life-giving, stream.

It doesn't hurt.  I don't feel a thing.  I don't feel a thing inside either.  In fact, I am uncommonly good at not thinking, too.  At some level I know this is not normal and it's not going to last, but for right now, not thinking and not feeling is the best course.  Nothing-ness is preferable.  I have no idea what is beyond the nothingness and I don't want to know. 

Later, I look at my body and think, "What a disaster!"  Black marks all over, scars and mutilation from previous surgeries, pudginess (I'm being very polite to myself here) from self-indulgence and medication, age spots and wrinkles and sags.  For some reason my mind flits to the scripture, "I bear on my body the marks of Jesus" (Gal. 6:17b).  I wish I could say that, but I can only think that I bear on my body the marks of sin and disease and decay.  But I'm still detached.  It doesn't really bother me; I'm just thinking objectively.

When I go to bed that night, I pray about my lack of feeling.  There's no pain in it, but there's no joy in it either.  "God, I don't feel anything.  Is that okay?  I think I should be feeling something here.  Please help me."  And the words come to my heart, "By his stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5), and I imagine Jesus taking the stripes for me, taking the pain for me, feeling the pain for me.  I realize that I don't have to feel right now.  Jesus has already done that for me too.

And then I cry.

In all their suffering he also suffered, and he personally rescued them.

In his love and mercy he redeemed them. He lifted them up and carried them through all the years.

Isaiah 63:9