Coming Back 'Round

What a torn-up foot taught me about turning fifty, saying yes to everything, and the strange gift of limits

Michelangelo's "Atlas" — one of the Prigioni, still half-bound in the marble. The figure isn't fighting the stone; it's taking shape because of it.

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight...
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
— Shaker hymn, "Simple Gifts"

In March, I had surgery on my foot to correct a years-long problem. In March, I also turned 50.

Because I had surgery, I had to take a lot of down time and rely on others to help me. Because it was my right foot, I couldn’t drive. And because I turned 50, my body didn’t bounce back the way it used to — recovery took longer than I expected, weeks longer than I expected. But it wasn’t any longer than the surgeon expected. According to her, I was right on schedule.

The surgery and recovery went normally. Nothing was wrong. There were no complications. The problem was my expectations. I expected to be up and doing more, sooner than was realistic. The disappointment of my own unmet expectations was surprisingly painful. I found myself in bed, frustrated, tired of depending on everyone else, and feeling like I was losing precious time in life.

This painful moment intersected with two other developments that God has graciously used to gently expose something in me for healing.

The first was coming to terms with my overcommitment. A few years ago, I was between jobs and got into the habit of snagging every opportunity I could. That was just straight up survival tactic — no shame there. However, even after my work situation stabilized, I didn’t stop saying “yes” to everything. Somewhere I got hooked on the offers, the little bit of extra income, the validation of being “needed” in so many places. As I heard in a podcast recently, I became “addicted to opportunity.” (Podcast here)

The second development was some reading I picked up. Rhonda and I were preparing for a 25th anniversary trip to Europe that we had been planning and saving for a long time. To get ready, I started reading and rereading some biographies of the great masters of Western art. I was struck by how great art requires constraint. Constraint in both the practice of the art itself and often external constraint. Beauty requires form; form means limitation. Art is made as the artist works within the limitations of the medium and the form being depicted. Additionally, very often there is an external constraint that requires genius innovation. This was certainly the case with Michelangelo’s work on the Sistine Chapel.

During my time of recovery, the Lord began to use these things to gently expose that I had been attempting to overrun my own limitations. I thought I could do every opportunity that came along. I thought that I would be up and around and back to normal far in advance of the surgeon’s instructions. I thought fifty would feel like forty, that my body would recover on my timeline instead of its own. I thought that all of this would happen and everything would still be balanced and beautiful.

Wrong.

In the story of creation, God brings things into existence, separates one thing from another, fills voids with life. All of this requires order and limitation. Light and dark. Earth and sky. Sea and land. Forms of life.

If we are not careful, we can misunderstand what it means to be in the image of God and disregard our own inherently limited humanity. To be in the image and likeness of God is not to be as the One who fills the universe and sustains all things. Rather, for us humans, it is to be like Jesus, the Word made Flesh. Godlikeness is, for us, Christlikeness.

And Christ was human, flesh and blood, sinew and bone. He bore limitations and worked within constraint. He suffered, he wept, he laughed, he prayed, he slept, he ate, he sat, and he walked. If he could be killed by human hands, then he was susceptible to the cold and flu, pulled muscles and that painful crick in your neck when you wake up in the morning.

Yet in this limitation of human form, he lived a life full of glory and joy. John the Beloved said he and his friends saw Jesus, heard Jesus, touched Jesus. He tells us about their story with God-in-the-flesh so that our joy might be full.

So one thing I am learning is that to follow God-in-the-flesh is to embrace my limitations. To remember that when God created human, God did not create a formless expanding cloud of intelligence. God created male and female humans who were limited, defined, concrete. And this He called good.

I am learning, slower than I would like but maybe not slower than I should, that embracing my constraints is good. It is the way to seeing the glory of God who came in the flesh. And this is the way to joy full and everlasting.