the susie solution

The last month has been busy.  I didn’t know it, but starting January 20th, God had my date book blocked out for at least two months with one word:  Marie.  She’s my cousin who lives here in town.  OK, technically, she’s my cousin-in-love, since she’s my husband’s blood-relation, but it doesn’t matter to me;  I love her as dearly as any of my own.  Her health is failing, but worse, so is her mind, and it has become clear she cannot live alone anymore.  After spending a week in the hospital, then 10 days at a rehab center, she has now been living with us for 3 weeks, and will remain so until we can figure out other options.  I had no idea I was about to be thrust into such an exhausting, confusing muddle.  One of the worst aspects to deal with is that she’s a hoarder.  (If you’ve seen the show, think “Hoarders” Lite.)  We are having to clean up her apartment, forcing her to part with a great deal.  We don’t know yet if she will ever move back home, or will be going into a facility, but either way, this has to be done.  Frankly, it feels like spending all day performing vivisection with a rusty razor blade.

It has me thinking a lot about sin.  Hoarding is not a sin; it is a mental illness, a form of OCD.  But all disease is a result of sin.  Sin takes what was good, and twists it to evil.  The knowledge of good and evil is a good thing.  Adam and Eve possessed it from the very moment of their creation:  to obey God was to do good, to disobey would be to do evil.  This they knew.  Satan convinced them that this knowledge wasn’t enough: they had to experience evil in order to truly “know” it.  He lied, of course, in telling them that this would make them like God.  God does not know evil by DOING evil; evil has no part in Him whatsoever.  Sin – the experiencing of evil – made them UNlike God, forever shattering the image they were created in.

Sin continues to twist things.  To admire the nice thing someone else owns, the talent someone else possesses – these are good; love rejoices in seeing the blessings others enjoy.  Sin takes that admiration and twists it into covetousness and envy.  For a man to admire a woman’s beauty as a creation of God is a good thing.  Sin takes that admiration and turns it into lust.  To see others walking in darkness and desire to provide light so that they may see is good.  Sin, as my pastor, Brian Wiele put it, takes that desire to give light and turns it into a glaring, self-righteous halogen searchlight pointed six inches from their face, so that not only does it not light their way, but actually forces them to shut their eyes and turn away; no wonder Jesus had more and harsher words for the Pharisees than He did for the “sinners”!

Sin has effected Creation.  Plants that were meant to feed us now produce thistles.  Other plants and animals produce toxic chemicals.  What would otherwise be harmless bacteria mutate to become deadly pathogens.  Cells grow, but the “off” signal gets lost and we face cancer.  Immune systems run amok and we have lupus, diabetes, and Celiac.  Brain chemicals become imbalanced, producing all manner of mental illnesses, from my own bipolar to my cousin’s OCD.  Defense mechanisms that normally function to protect us become the enemy attacking us from within.

My heart breaks daily as I watch my poor cousin’s struggle.   Hoarders cannot distinguish relative value; everything is equally “special”.   Hoarders cannot distinguish their “stuff” from their “selves”; to get rid of things is to part with pieces of themselves.  The progress we have made has not led to her feeling “freed”.  She has no sense of “relief”.  No, she mourns the loss of every item she has had to part with.  Every unoccupied moment of the day is spent either grieving what has gone, or dreading what is still to be lost.  Getting rid of her “stuff” will create a safer environment for her, but it will not rid her of her disease.  She remains as trapped as ever in its torturous jaws.

We are now into the season of Lent, that solemn time of reflection and repentance as we consider what Christ did and why He had to do it.  As I’ve been going through all this with Marie, and mourning for all that she suffers because of the twisting Satan has done through sin in creating her disease, I’ve been pondering what it must have been like for Jesus to walk on earth among His beloved creations and experience in human form what it is like to live in this world twisted by sin.  We are only told two times of His weeping – at Lazarus’ tomb, the symbol of the epitome of sin’s physical consequences, death, and at the entry to Jerusalem where He wept at their rejection of Him, the epitome of sin’s spiritual consequences, the refusal of God’s proffered grace.  But although those are the only two times we are told outright that He wept, I am convinced that every moment of Jesus’ life here on earth must have been filled with heartache as He experienced His creation’s brokenness.

But that was why He came:  to fix what is broken.  Even though in Adam we chose to break our fellowship with God and one another, and to break the very world in which we had been placed, God chose not to turn away and to leave us to the awful consequences of those choices.  Instead, He chose to suffer every consequence of sin in Himself on the cross so that this world’s brokenness wouldn’t be the end of the story.  Sin doesn’t win.  Brokenness won’t last.  A Day is coming when all the harmful things we hold on to will be swept away – and we won’t mourn the loss!