Has Jesus Been Gentle with Me?
This is Part 2 of the talk I gave on March 14th at the Women’s Mini-Conference in Bristol, Vermont. In Part 1, I talked about the personality of Jesus, zeroing in on his gentleness, and ended by asking this question:
How has Jesus been gentle with me?
Many of you know my story from my book, but for those of you that don’t, here’s an abbreviated version.
The summer I turned 16, three major events happened in my life.
We were living in the Seattle area, where we were very involved in our church. I had grown up going to church, and my sister and I were both very active in the youth group. That spring, our church held a week-long revival. A group called the Cruse Family came. This was a team that traveled around to different churches all over the country, and they were all related, either as brothers and sisters or in-laws. One couple from the group stayed in our home with their toddler son, so we got to know each other. I would come home from school and they would be in our kitchen with my mom as she fixed dinner. And every night that week they held services at our church. There was terrific music with powerful worship songs, and different men in their group would preach. On the last night of that revival, the young man who was staying in our home was preaching. I don’t really remember what he said in his sermon, but at the end of the service, he asked people to come forward and pray at the altar if they wanted to make a commitment to follow Christ—whether for the first time, or perhaps to rekindle their commitment to following Jesus. I was sitting way up in the balcony, but I made my way down the stairs. There were so many people kneeling there at the steps near the podium, so many people had come to pray, that I could only make it part way down the aisle. But I got down on my knees and prayed. I told God he could have my life. I began to list off all the different areas of my life and hand them over to God one by one: my relationship with my boyfriend, my schoolwork, my musical ability, my relationship with my parents. I told God that whatever he had in mind for my life, I was handing it all over to him. I was all in.
Not longer after that, my father was diagnosed with a hereditary neuro-muscular disease. He had been having increasing difficulty with his balance when he was walking, and his dexterity was starting to be a problem. Things like holding a pencil or doing buttons were becoming more difficult. The neurologists told him he had Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, or CMT for short. It’s not a tooth disease. The strange name comes from the three doctors that first identified it in the 1880’s. It’s a very slow-progressing, wasting disease of the extremities. Toes, feet, ankles and legs, fingers, hands, and wrists. Those muscles slowly atrophy over years.
And because it’s hereditary, they told us that my sister and I each had a 50/50 chance that we had inherited the gene for it. So they tested us both, and we both had it. Have it. Which is why you see me using a cane today and holding onto my dear friend Corinne’s elbow in order to walk up front here and sit on this stool.
When I was about 30 years old, I was fitted for these leg braces, under my socks. They are hard plastic, form-fitted to my legs, and they hold my feet erect to help me walk. And for about ten years, I just had the braces and didn’t need a cane. Then I started needing the cane as well. Now I’m 54, and lately the cane is not enough. Now I’m occasionally using a wheelchair, especially in an airport or a museum. We tried a walker, and that didn’t work very well.
But anyway… Back to my story.
I started by saying that three major events happened that year.
So, I renewed my commitment to follow Jesus at that revival, then I was diagnosed with CMT, and then, one evening at the dinner table my dad told us that our family was moving to Missouri. Remember we were living in Seattle. So, just before my junior year of high school, I moved 2,000 miles away from all my friends, away from my boyfriend, …and basically started a new life in Missouri. I was devastated.
But I have to believe that in his gentle way, God prepared me for that. He prepared my heart both for that move in the middle of my high school years, and for the struggle that he knew I would have for the rest of my life with this disease. Because I have often found myself going back in my mind to that moment on my knees in the aisle of that dark sanctuary, handing my life over to God.
And even in the middle of that move God was gentle with me. I want to share a little story from my book about a night just before we moved. I had just turned 16, and I was crying out to God because I didn’t want to leave my boyfriend and all my friends and move across the country.
I stayed up late one of those nights, curled up in my dad’s easy chair after everyone else had gone to bed. The reading lamp next to me was the only light in the silent, shadowy main floor of our home. My Bible lay closed in my lap—the Bible I had toted back and forth to youth group and Sunday school so often. The binding was falling apart, and the corners of the cover were ragged. There were highlighted passages and verses underlined in red pen, but I was at a loss.
“Lord,” I prayed, “I don’t know how to do this. How can I say goodbye? How can I leave this place? You are asking so much of me. I don’t think I can do this.”
I opened my Bible randomly, and the pages fell open to Philippians 4. I looked down and read the words of verse 13: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (NASB).
The next day a huge moving van pulled into our driveway, and strange men were in our house, wrapping all our dishes and knickknacks in white paper and stuffing them into boxes. Even in my bedroom a man wearing a blue uniform was putting all my books and stuffed animals into a box marked “Girl’s Room #2.”
And God has continued to be gentle with me. In big ways, like providing my incredible husband who does all kinds of things for me daily. Things you don’t even think about, like washing our car yesterday so that when I lean against it to catch my balance, I don’t get my coat all dirty. Or getting the mail everyday, because I can no longer walk out to the mailbox by myself. Or pushing me in a wheelchair through the airport. Or helping me with buttons. Or installing a grab bar in the shower. Or walking me out to my garden, because I can no longer walk out there by myself, and helping me get down on the ground so I can weed, and then he comes back out and helps me get up off the ground.
And God has given me amazing friends, who are willing to lend me an arm to help me walk across a room, or who will even run to the grocery store for me.
But then, God is often gentle with me in little tiny ways. Ann Voskamp has a terrific book called “One Thousand Gifts.” She is challenged by a friend to keep a list—a journal, if you will—of 1,000 blessings that God gives her. It changed her, because she started noticing all kinds of little things God was doing for her each day. And she challenges us to do the same. Several years ago I started a journal like that, and the other day I was cleaning out a drawer and ran across it. I never made it to 1,000. I wish I had. Listen to just a few:
My neighbor’s cat comes to say “meow” to me while I am weeding flowers along the curb, she rubs against me legs, purring.
My daughter comes downstairs on the first day school for her senior year, looking glamorous in a summer dress and cardigan, her hair hanging long and lush. She asks, “Do you remember my first day of Kindergarten?” and hugs me.
Praying with a close friend and my husband, alone in the church kitchen, praying over how to handle a tough situation.
One of my piano students shows me how she can do a cartwheel in my living room.
A phone call from my sweet son as he was walking along the beach in downtown Chicago at dusk.
A heating pad to make my back feel better, lying on it on our bedroom floor while talking with my husband.
The smell of pumpkin bread baking.
Listening to my daughter sing in the shower.
You get the idea. Jesus is gentle with me every day! So, I want to challenge you as well. Join me in doing this. Each day recall a time (or times) when Jesus has been gentle with you. Write it down. It could be in the form of a person, or a special moment that blessed you. Perhaps a time when he nudged you gently to do something or showed you something in nature that gave you a reminder of his love for you. It’s a great exercise to recall the goodness of God in your life. (Comment below with your own little story!)
I’d like to close by reading one little short chapter from my book which I think really illustrates a time when Jesus was gentle with me. It’s just a couple pages. This is called, “Crossing the Street.”
This is the kind of thing God does for me.
My parking spot is taken. MY personal parking spot. Well, okay, it doesn’t have my name on it, but it’s the only handicap parking spot on the same side of the street as the cafe on Main Street. I need it. I need that spot because it is near the ramp up to the cafe entrance. From any other spot on the block I would have to step up onto the curb (no easy task) and then walk a distance down the sidewalk to the ramp.
I am supposed to be meeting a friend here for lunch. She is probably already inside, waiting. I drive by the parking spot slowly, peering through the windows of the obstructing vehicle. Does it have a handicap placard? Is it parked there legally? Yes, actually it is. The tag is hanging from the mirror.
I turn at the corner and go around the block again. The car is still there. Ugh. Where am I going to park? Now all the other spots are taken as well. I take one more loop around the block. I’m going to have to park somewhere.
Then I notice a spot across the street. It is a handicap spot, the only other one on the block, and it’s open, but if I park there I will have to cross the street. I turn my car around in a driveway and head back toward it. It’s my only option. As I maneuver my car back and forth to parallel park, I am wondering whether I can walk across the street safely. There is a crosswalk nearby, and it leads right to the ramp for the cafe, but I am nervous about the cars. Will they stop for me? It might take me a long time to cross. Will the drivers be impatient?
After I turn off the engine, I sit looking out my car window at the front door of the cafe. I wonder whether my friend is inside. I text her and wait. Maybe she could come and walk me across the street. She doesn’t answer my text. I wait a few more minutes, but she still doesn’t answer. Sigh. I guess I’ll have to do this on my own.
I look back at the street and wait until no cars are coming before I step out of my vehicle. As my feet hit the pavement I can feel my knees shaking. With my cane to steady me, I go to the edge of the crosswalk. One car approaches slowly, then stops. I’ve got to cross now. They are waiting. No time to get up my courage. I take a step out into the street.
“Hey, Suzanne!” A familiar, deep voice startles me from behind. I can’t look back because I am afraid I will lose my balance now that I have started across. “Hey, Suzanne!” I know this voice. And my anxious heart relaxes now as I realize who it is. It’s my pastor, Travis. He is crossing the street right behind me. I know without a doubt that if I fall right here in the middle of the street he will pick me up.
But I don’t fall. Just having someone there has given me the confidence to cross. When I reach the other side, at the bottom of the ramp, I finally look up at his friendly face. “Hey, Travis!”
He doesn’t know the magnitude of what his simple greeting has just done for me. He doesn’t know that God placed him there at that street corner at exactly the right time today. We chat for a little bit before walking into the cafe together, and I greet my friend, who is sitting at a table waiting for me.
Yep. That’s the kind of thing God does for me.
Suzanne Rood is the author of A LIMP OF FAITH (Credo House Publishers, 2019), her story of daily life with CMT, a hereditary neuropathy that challenges her walking, her music, and her faith. Here’s a link to purchase the book on Amazon.